Here’s my semi-regular round-up of trailers for new African or African-themed films which I wish to get my hands on. It’s a big continent, so I am not surprised at the output. Some of these are sure to make the rounds at film festivals, short runs in art cinemas or pop up on obscure cable channels. I’m still waiting for that entrepreneur who’ll start a Netflix for African films. I’ll be a customer.

“Last Call At The Oasis” is about the global crisis of water which affects us all.

“White Wash,” a documentary about black surfers in the US, which reminds me of the film, “Taking Back the Waves,” about Apartheid racism and surfing in South Africa.

“Angel,” a documentary film directed by Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva, is about a former Ecuadorian boxer, lately a transvestite sex worker in France, traveling back to his homeland.

Films about the unfinished Egyptian Revolution our coming out fast. Take “Tahrir 2011: The Good, The Bad And The Politician.” The film is divided into three chapters; the first focuses on activists, the second on the police and the third the dictator Hosni Mubarak:

Then, Italian director Stefano Savona’s “Tahrir: Liberation Square.”

Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost‘s “The Invader” focuses on the travails of an African migrant in Brussels. The film has a brilliant opening scene.

American Allysa Eisenstein’s film, “Breaking the Chains,” is on homophobia in Uganda is based on interviews with gay rights activists and the bigotry and hate they encounter.

There’s a few others for which I can’t find trailers: The film version of Albert Camus’ final, unfinished novel based on his childhood in French-occupied Algeria, “The First Man.”; “The Education of Auma Obama” about Barack Obama’s sister, Auma, which includes home video of the young Barack Obama on his first ever visit to Kenya in the late 1980s.

A few films have their trailers or teasers on social media apps like Youtube and Vimeo. First up is Swiss director Fernand Melgar’s “Special Flight” or “Vol Special.”

Film critic Leo Goldsmith reviews “Special Flight” in Brooklyn Rail, highlighting its focus on a Swiss detention center for asylum-seekers. The film portrays foreign nationals, mostly from Africa and Kosovo, awaiting deportation after decades in Switzerland. It explores staff-inmate interactions, marked by sympathy, regret, and a sense of duty.

Another feature film with African migrants washing up on the shores of a European island at the heart of it; this time, the Canary Islands.

The very talented Akin Omotoso (somebody give him buckets of money to keep making films) directed “Man on Ground,” a movie about xenophobic violence against African migrants by black South Africans in Johannesburg.  Here‘s an early review and here‘s an interview with Omotoso.

“The Cardboard Village” is about an Italian priest and illegal immigrants who take shelter in his church.  Bonus: it stars “Blader Runner” star Rutger Hauer. (I don’t know what to expect from that casting choice.) The trailer doesn’t make much sense, but here it is anyway.

And. here – in its entirety, is a new short, “Counterfeit,” about West African migrants selling counterfeit watches and fake handbags in Chinatown in New York City:

“Shades of the Border” is a 12-minute short about racism and the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (no surprises from which side the racism emanates):

“Always Brando” is part fake documentary, part drama about a Tunisian filmmaker’s obsession with the famed American actor.

Another North African film. This time Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaidi’s “Death for Sale” about 3 young petty thieves:

Then there is, “Les Hommes libres,” a period piece about an Algerian black marketer in Nazi-occupied France (also by a Moroccan director). The lead is played by Tahar Rahim who played the lead in the prison film, “A Prophete.” (I’m assuming this is in the same vein as the excellent “Indigènes,” which aimed to set the record straight about the roles of blacks and Arabs’ in the liberation of France during World War II).

“The Rhythm of My Life,” a documentary film about the Miami rapper Ismael Sankara who travels to Gabon to visit family and figures out his life and career:

A number of German films have recently explored their country’s relationship to the African continent. (Remember “Nowhere in Africa,” “Sleeping Sickness” and “At Ellen’s Age.”  Now there’s “The River Used To Be A Man” about a German actor finding himself in some open African space.  Here‘s a clip (what’s with trailers that don’t mean or say much?).

The trailer for director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Le Havre” is about the relationship of an elderly working-class couple in the French port city of the title with a young, lovable African illegal immigrant they’re harboring and the police inspector searching for the stowaway. This film is loved by every mainstream critic who has reviewed it. The trailer suggests it has obvious tropes that appeal to American and European audiences.

Talk about films with cute children. “Lucky” is a film about a young South African child and the AIDS epidemic there (remember “Life Above All” directed by Oliver Schmitz and which had a limited release here in New York City in the Spring).  The director of “Lucky” is Avie Luthra, an Indian national. In “Lucky” there is a nice twist though; unlike most AIDS films he is not saved by a saintly white person: the lead character ends up in Durban with unscrupulous relatives, but is helped by a South African woman of Indian origin. As far as I know, apart from Leon Schuster’s racist caricatures (Disney just gave him guarantees to make more of that nonsense), “Lucky” might be the first time you have an Indian South African in a major role in a film coming from that country.

There’s also the music-focused “Microphone” by Egyptian director Ahmed Abdallah.

The trailer for Columbia University art historian Susan Vogel’s film, “Food, Crumple Crush,” about the famed Ghanaian artist El Anatsui who lives in Nigeria.

One of the films I want to get to soonest is “Indochina, tras la pista de una madre” (Indochina, Traces of a Mother), the story of an Afro-Asian man, the son of a Vietnamese woman and an African soldier. He goes back to Vietnam. His parents met when his father, from Benin, was conscripted by France to go and resist Vietnamese independence:

Trust me, “Le collier et la perle,” will not make a commercial cinema screen here. The Senegalese director Mamadou Sellou Diallo films his wife’s pregnancy and his daughter’s birth. It’s also a film about womanhood in Senegal:

There are also some films about the descendants of Africans in America: “Brooklyn Boheme,” director Diana Paragas and writer Nelson George’s documentary film about Black life in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in the late 1980s and 1990s, is finally here. My interest is piqued by Fort Greene being my neighborhood for the last 10 years.

There’s a documentary film about black American punk rockers, Fishbone:

“The Weird World of Blowfly” is a profile of foul-mouthed, ageing rapper Blowfly; in daily life, the mainstream musician Clarence Reid.

Helene Lee, who wrote a book -“The First Rasta” – about Leonard Howell, considered the founder of Rastafari in Jamaica, has now made a documentary about him.

Finally, a short film you can watch in full: Johannesburg filmmaker Palesa Shongwe – whose work reminds me of fellow South African Steve Mokwena – has a short film”Atrophy (and the fear of fading)” about nostalgia and youth.