Africa Is a Country

Movies that matter

Movies that matter

By
Tom Devriendt

If you can’t make it to Stockholm next week, visiting The Hague might be a good alternative. The Movies That Matter Festival has also planned some promising premieres (and I’m relying more on the trailers than on the film festival’s site descriptions). Three films I hope to see there are. First up, Surprising Europe, a “documentary about a disappointed immigrant, who wants to show his fellow-countrymen the true face of Europe.” More on the film’s website.

The Mobile Cinema “… follows the mobile cinema crew members as they travel through inhospitable areas of Congo, to screen their much-awarded Fighting the Silence and change people’s attitude towards rape.”

And a documentary about rapper Sister Fa:

Sarabah

Subjected to female genital mutilation as a child, the Queen of Hip Hop now campaigns to protect Senegalese girls from a similar fate. In the film, she returns to her native village to try to put an end to this centuries-old tradition through music and education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPPX4cnEIUQ

A full list of the featuring films can be found here.

— Tom Devriendt

Further Reading

Fuel’s errand

When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.