5 African Films to Watch Out For, N°19

“Vers la forêt de nuages” (“To the cloud forest”) is a film by Robin Hunzinger, who tells a story about his Ivorian wife Aya and their son Tim (in the image above), travelling in Côte d’Ivoire to pay tribute to Aya’s father who recently passed way. The film intends to offer a portrait of and an “initiation” to the country. Follow the production of the project on its Facebook page. Here’s a first trailer:

The director of “Pars et Reviens Tard” (“Leave and come back late(r)”) Aurylia Rotolo (with help from Xavier Deleu) first met the documentary’s protagonist, “Régis,” while in Tanger, Morocco. Cameroonian Régis — a professional football player in his home country — had plans to make a living in Europe but wasn’t gonna risk his life crossing the Mediterranean Sea illegally. When Moroccan clubs turn out not to be too keen to give him a contract either, he returns home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNrjCUQVkeI

For reasons so far unknown, a screening of Jews of Egypt was banned by the Egyptian National Security earlier this week. The documentary is a portrait of the lives of the Egyptian Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century until their second grand exodus after 1956. “An attempt to understand the change in the identity of the Egyptian society that turned from a society full of tolerance and acceptance of one another … and how it changed gradually by mixing religious and political views into a society that rejects the others,” in the words of the film’s director Amir Ramses:

“Downtown Tribes” is a short documentary created and directed by Amirah Tajdin, and produced by Wafa Tajdin of 8486 Films, commissioned by STR.CRD and shot at their “Urban Street Culture Event” last year (where Dylan and Antoinette also interviewed Just A Band). Loyal AIAC readers will have fun spotting the many familiar faces:

And “A Batalha de Tabatô” (“The Battle of Tabatô”) is a first-time feature by director Joao Viana exploring music, magic and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “post-colonial angst” in Guinea-Bissau. We’re still interested though, because that same review remarks Viana’s combining “a strong eye and rich subject matter”. Here’s a first teaser:

And here’s another one.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Quando Portugal esquece

Em ‘Contos do Esquecimento,’ Dulce Fernandes desenterrou histórias esquecidas da escravidão em Portugal, desafiando uma mitologia nacional construída sobre viagens marítimas, silêncio e memória seletiva.