Africa Is a Country

New Documentaries To Look Out For at the Luxor African Film Festival

New Documentaries To Look Out For at the Luxor African Film Festival

By
Tom Devriendt

The third edition of the Egyptian Luxor African Film Festival again has a wide-ranging programme scheduled for next month. Selected films will be showing in different competitions: Long Narrative, Short Narratives, Short Documentaries and Long Documentary. Below you’ll find a couple of the selected documentaries’ trailers (set in Togo, Senegal, Ghana, Somalia, South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Angola) that were recently uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo, plus links to the films’ websites — where available.

Nana Benz (2012, 85 min, director Thomas Bölken) | Togo

Touba (2013, Chai Vasarhelyi) | Senegal

Lettres du Voyant (2013, Louis Henderson) is a documentary-fiction about spiritism and technology in contemporary Ghana, which attempts to uncover a mysterious practice called “Sakawa” – internet scams mixed with voodoo magic.

From the same filmmaker, Louis Henderson, also showing is Logical Revolts (2012) | Egypt

Angola Ano Zero (2013, Ever Miranda) | Angola

The River (2013, 86 min, Abdenour Zahzah). During a journey on foot along the Oued El Kebir River, Zahzah encounters mini-societies of people who give us a different picture of Algeria.

Ali’ens: Somalis in Transit (2013, 90 min, Paula Palacios) | Somalia

Emirs in Wonderland (2013, 75 min, Ahmed Jlassi) | Tunisia

Made in Gougou (2013, Latifa Doghri) | Tunisia

Light and Dark (2013, 45 min, Paulene Abrey), a biopic of South African artist Norman Catherine | South Africa

LAFF takes place from 16 March to 24 March. See the Festival’s website for more details.

Further Reading

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

Coming home

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Imaginary homelands

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Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.