Films and documentaries

Two boys (Moussa & Aguid) awake one morning to find that their father has abandoned their family. Shocked, they begin to misbehave. While surreptitiously watching a movie, they think they see their father speaking to them and steal the film to examine the frames. Their mother (Haroun) eventually despairs and sends them to Koranic school. Unhappy, they plan their escape until the eldest boy falls in love with a deaf girl (Khalil).

A travelogue as intimate and focused as a personal essay oscillating between an outside and an inside gaze: on his quest to recover the lost images of his early childhood a tourist from the African diaspora (starring Kenyan actor Sidede Onyulo) encounters a country steeped in ancient magic, facing the twenty-first century with the humour, verve, and ingenuity of its proverbial "Mosquito That Wanted to Marry Man's Ear." AFRICA REPRESENTA is a journey between the city and adobe huts, an encounter with the unknown in the contrasts of an area in Tanzania typical of sub-Saharan Africa: an old chief steeped in the world of magic; two young rappers trying to make it in the city; young Muslim women who feel they're kept like livestock; young Masai warriors who see their future in computer courses, not in their old traditions. The traveller's quest to comprehend reaches the limits of the humanly possible--for "understanding life is like looking into the sun. Far too much light will hit the searching eyes."

A documentary examining political repression in Cameroon, Central Africa.

Despite the North-South gap, the information technology revolution has become a daily reality in many African countries, where the Internet, mobile telephones and digital video cameras are being used with extraordinary creativity and versatility. Afro@digital, a 52-minute documentary directed by Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda of the Congo, and produced by UNESCO, looks at the promise ICT hold for Africa.

Arlit, deuxième Paris is a case study in migration and enviromental racism set in an uranium mining town in the Sahara desert of Niger. Here European corporations extracted nuclear power and profits, leaving behind illness due to radation, contamination and unemployment.

Millions of civilians fled their homes in Southern Sudan during 21 years of war with the north. Now, three years after a peace accord was signed, thousands are returning every week. But there´s not much to come home to: jobs are very scarce, infrastructure is almost non-existent and fear of renewed violence looms large in the minds of many returnees.

Between Hope and Fear follows on family´s journey home from neighbouring Uganda, where they had lived for years as refugees under constant threat of attack by the Lord´s Resistance Army. Until this Ugandan rebel group disarms, few in Southern Sudan will feel entirely safe.

In his most recent film, Chef!, Teno locates the roots of Africa's authoritarian regimes in the patriarchal family, reinforced by traditional kingship and the colonial experience. Teno insists that this film was not planned but imposed itself on him during a visit to his ancestral village, Bandjoun, in the Ghomala speaking region of Western Cameroon. He had gone to film dances dedicating a monument to King Kamga Joseph II, the filmmakers' great granduncle, but the ceremony soon turned into a celebration of one-man rule, in particular Cameroonian President Paul Biya's.

Teno bought a souvenir calendar listing "the rules and regulations of the husband in his home." These included: "The husband is always chief - even in bed;" or " If the husband strikes the wife while visitors are present, she must smile and pretend that nothing has happened; etc" Teno wryly observes that if every husband is a chief then Cameroon is a nation of 7 million chiefs. The director of the Association for the End of Violence to Women points out that the husbands' dominance over his wife is guaranteed not only by tradition, but by the French Civil Code of 1804 which is still operative in Cameroon, though long since revised in France.

Kaffee ist nach Erdöl der meistgehandelte Rohstoff der Welt und damit ein enormes Geschäft. Die grosse Frage ist jedoch, wie dieser Kuchen weltweit verteilt ist. Wer bekommt den Kuchen, wer die Brösel? Woher kommt der Kaffee und wer verdient daran? Der Film vermittelt in anschaulicher Weise, was jede Tasse Kaffee vom System der Globalisierung erzählt, das die Anbauländer in der Regel benachteiligt. Doch mit dem Fairen Handel gibt es eine gangbare Alternative. Gumutindo, eine kleine Genossenschaft von Kaffeebauern in Uganda, die handwerklich produziert, steht für¨ Alternativen zum konventionellen Kaffeehandel. Am Beispiel dieser Genossenschaft wird deutlich, wie alternative und faire Strukturen für die Produktion und im Handel aussehen können.

Documentary about how King Leopold II of Belgium acquired Congo as a colony and exploited it by reign of terror.

In 1998 war broke out in the Demopcratic Republic of Congo. Within weeks six other countries had been drawn into the conflict and scores of militias had sprung up in a battle for resources and regional power. By May 2003 most foreign troops had been withdrawn but dozens of militias remained. Countless millions of people have been displaced, denied an education or acces to health care. As many as four million people have lost their lives.

Contes cruels de la guerre: Ibéa Atondi uses the story of a return to his home country, Congo-Brazzaville, to adopt an unusual viewpoint on the wars of contemporary Africa. Fascinated by the bloodthirsty madness of Mignon, a Cobra fighter destroyed by alcohol and drugs, the female narrator attempts to grasp the mechanisms that drove him and his companions to abandon all human dignity. No images of violence are used to evoke the horrors of war; this is done through use of metaphor to underpin the statements of victims and executioners.

Courting justice profiles indomitable female judges charged with the task of advancing those rights and enacting transitional justice while confronting the challenges of a male dominated institution. This dynamic film examines the transformation to democracy through the intimate and inspiring stories of women working for change from the beach.

In a small Central African village, boyhood friends Djimi and Koni have come of age under a post-colonial government that levies crippling taxes and legally robs local farmers of their meager crops. When impulsive Koni savagely attacks a visiting government official, the resulting massacre forces the two friends on a journey that will transform them from boys into men, from farmers into soldiers and from villagers into revolutionaries...

Directed by Issa Serge Coelo. In Arabic and French with English subtitles.

More than 20 years since the discovery of the AIDS virus, and despite huge advances in the prevention and treatment of the disease, AIDS is still decimating communities across Africa. This is the story of one such community. In 2006, IRIN received the third prize for Deadly Catch: Lake Victoria’s AIDS crisis - November 2005 from the Stories from the Field Film Festival, the annual UN Documentary Film Festival.

Delta Force continues the story of the late Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people, and picks up where The Drilling Fields left off. It starts with a look back at the previous film and updates the story to include the unlawful arrest of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the subsequent implementation of Operation Restore in Ogoni land. This is a military campaign of terror waged against the Ogoni people in an attempt to restore oil production in their area. Delta Force also examines the massive international campaign organized to pressure Nigeria`s dictatorship into releasing Saro-Wiwa, who exposed corruption and injustice with his writings and his activism. Mr. Saro-Wiwa was nevertheless executed by the Nigerian government despite massive international appeals for clemency.  Much of the footage used in Delta Force was secretly shot by the Ogoni themselves.

The film won the Geneva International Television Award in 1996.

Duoble Take is a tutorial document to promote Fairtrade.

On the seacoast of Mauritania, some wait to go to Europe. Khatra, a spirited boy, wants an electric light so he can read at night. A stoic older man, Maata, tries to wire the room. Abdallah, a youth on his way to Europe, says good-bye to his mother. Nana looks back on the death of her daughter and her trip to Europe to inform the father. A girl takes singing lessons. Rooms have small windows, looking out onto foot traffic; transistor radios provide some link beyond. Huge ships anchor in the distance. The train comes through, stopping briefly. Offering a cigarette is a gesture of hospitality. Sand dunes and the ocean dominate the landscape. Hope springs amidst small expectations.

End of the Rainbow explores the human dimensions of industrial gold mining in two remote locations. As the mine's structures and equipment are dismantled in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, then transported and reconstructed to begin gold processing in Guinea, West Africa, what unfolds is an elegiac portrait of the changes brought by the mine and of the universal human desire for a better life.

Ezra is the first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of abducting child soldiers into the continent's recent civil wars. Ezra is structured around the week-long questioning of a 16 year old boy, Ezra, before a version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, created in Sierra Leone in 2002 in the wake of its decade long civil war. This hearing is then inter-cut with chronological flashbacks to pivotal moments during Ezra's ten years in the rebel faction which made him who he is.

The story of Zamiatou, a Songhaï woman, in North Eastern Mali. With two young sons, a pretty daughter and a handicapped husband, Zamiatou struggles to survive in a remote and barren area. She doesn't want her daughter to "work" for white people, but her determination will take her far from her family

Each of these three dramatic shorts from Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia offers a critical look at the relationship between fathers and their children in contemporary Africa. Surrender shows the traditional face of paternal tyranny, a father controlling his son's life. In contrast, A Barber's Wisdom satirizes a modern father who compromises his children in his relentless pursuit of money. In The Father, the patriarch in question is ultimately the military dictatorship which terrorized Ethiopia in the '70s and '80s. The critique of fathers in these three films is reminiscent of the blistering indictment of patriarchy in post-independence Africa at the center of Ousmane Sembene's newest film.

When Sudan's warring factions signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, millions of southerners displaced by the war started to plan their long journey home. But a stark reality awaits these people as they return to a region devoid of services and utterly devastated by war.

Mererani in northern Tanzania is the only place on earth where the precious stone tanzanite is mined. Every day thousands of children risk their lives in poorly constructed mine shafts for barely a meal a day. Despite efforts to curb this deadly practice, the global thirst for tanzanite continues to drive these children underground.

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70% female handing Rwanda´s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption "God Sleeps in Rwanda" captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefining women´s roles in Rwandan society and bringing hope to a wounded nation.

This film will appeal to those who like to know more about exotic lands they will likely never visit. Ouagadougou (Wa-ga-doo-goo), the capital of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) is such a place. A variety of characters are introduced in this tale of ordinary folks trying to get by in a Third World country. The pace of the film is slow, just as it appears daily life is in this locale. Not slow in the boring sense, but in the unhurried way of life that no doubt reflects an age-old culture in no rush to live like hectic big-city Westerners. Such a plot as there is involves a young Muslim's misadventures as he tries to find honest entry-level work. His father's religious community connections land him a job, but things start to go wrong immediately. This is a gentle family film with no violence, sex or foul language--and no special effects. Just a good story well told and well acted.

Charlie, Thabo and Peter, three "MK" veterans from the armed branch of the African National Congress, return to post-apartheid South Africa in 1996 after years of exile. It will not be easy for them to find their place in society again. Charlie dreams of opening a club, Thabo has to patch up his relationship with his wife and son and Peter continues to work in the Party and investigate the traitors of the ANC. Continuously hampered as he delves into the Government's files, his ensuing investigations provide shocking revelations of the identities of the traitors. Pared down from a successful mini series for the South African Broadcasting Corporation,Homecoming draws its plot from the real life experiences of acclaimed filmmaker and writer, Zola Maseko, a former "MK" soldier of the ANC. Morman Maake (26) is perhaps the most promising young director from South Africa. He studied at ADFA, a dynamic young film- and drama school in Johannesburg. He has several films to his name, amongst which Sweet Home(1999), Soldiers of Rock (2003), and Homecoming (2005).

House of love: This film explores the lives of sex-workers in the small Namibian harbour of Walvis Bay. The women are dependent for the business on the brief visits of foreign shipping trawlers. They give revealing insights into the choices they have made and why they have made them. Their conflicts to do with notions of love, sex, sin and redemption become the main themes, while the threat of HIV/AIDS hangs ominously in the background.

Short Fairtrade film Swap Your Choc, giving you the opportunity to find out about some of the cocoa farmers in Ghana whose lives are benefitting from Fairtrade. Once you've worked up an appetite for chocolatey goodies, you can browse and buy from stalls by local chocolatier Auberge du Chocolat, and also from Yummy Scrummy and Traidcraft.

Breaking Rocks: Looks at the hundreds of Sierra Leonean children who work breaking rocks for construction in order to pay for their school fees.

Escaping Floods: For tens of thousands of Mozambicans, the pattern of flooded rivers is becoming all too familiar, resulting in heavy loss of life and livelihood. But in Chokwe district, the Red Cross is teaching people to build grain silos in the trees to keep seeds safe when floods strike. (September 2008)

when floods strike. (September 2008)

Acht Filme schaffen Begegnungen mit Kindern aus Indien, Senegal, Mexiko, Philippinen, Burundi, Brasilien, Jemen, Peru und Mosambik, deren Umwelt und Lebensbedingungen. Wir erfahren, was diese Kinder beschäftigt, wovon sie träumen, worauf sie hoffen. Anhand von lebendigen Geschichten können sich Kinder von hier mit dem Alltag von Kindern aus dem Süden auseinandersetzen. Neben den Filmen bietet die DVD multimediale Hintergrundinformation, Unterrichtsvorschläge, Arbeitsblätter und Kopiervorlagen, weiterführende Ideen und didaktische Anregungen, medienpädagogische Vorschläge, Links uvm. Dieser didaktische Teil ist auch auf CD-ROM abrufbar.

In a little village somewhere in Africa, a boy named Kirikou is born. But he's not a normal boy, because he knows what he wants very well. Also he already can speak and walk. His mother tells him how an evil sorceress has dried up their spring and devoured all males of the village except of one. Hence little Kirikou decides, he will accompany the last warrior to the sorceress. Due to his intrepidity he may be the last hope of the village.

A dwarf born into an intolerant village meets a farmer who teaches her about love, friendship and sacrifice.

In his film 'La tête dans les nuages' ('Head in the Clouds') Jean-Marie Teno criticizes the ills of the modern world and the regression of African societies. This short documentary shows the capital of the Cameroon, Yaondé, but might equally show other African cities: heaps of rubbish lie at the edge of streets, academics are out of work, officials unpaid, corruption is the norm, and misery everywhere. For Jean-Marie Teno 'colonization, civilization, independence, then humanitarian talk are merely excuses and theatrical gestures to ensure that Africa remains the place which foreign powers can exploit with a good conscience.'

The Little Girl Who Sold the SunDrama. Sili is a young disabled girl who is a beggar. One day she is jostled and knocked down by a group of children who are selling newspapers. Picking herself up, she makes up her mind to stop begging and become independent, and decides to sell newspapers too, despite opposition from her rivals. The title refers to The Sun, the newspaper the little girl sells on the streets of Dakar. ...The Franc / The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun ( Le Franc / La Petite vendeuse de soleil )

Tells the history of Liberia and a war-weary people's struggle to rebuild their nation after 14 years of civil war. Focuses on the period from the departure of rebel leader-turned president Charles Taylor to the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first African woman head of state, and the difficulties of rehabilitating a nation destroyed by war.

Worldvide more than two million children and adolescents are living with HIV. Close to 90% of paediatric infections occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Love, Positively follows the lives of four young adults living in Ugandan capital, Kampala who were infected at birth, and explores the challenges they face growing up with HIV and the courage they need to overcome it.

Une femme décide d'en finir avec les hommes et de faire sa vie toute seule. Cette résolution ne l'empêchera de retomber amoureuse d'un homme charmant en apparence mais qui se révélera être un vrai bougre.

As much as it was achievement by millions, inside South Africa and beyond, the end of apartheid and the establishment of electoral democracy in South Africa was the glorious human achievement of one individual, one whose personal story completely contains the suffering and victory of his people: Nelson Mandela.

Malaria kills an estimated three million people every year worldwide - most of them in Africa. It is the number one killer in many countries south of the Sahara.

Ethiopia is among the places hardest hit. The disease can kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single epidemic. Extreme poverty, lack of health care and population pressures help the disease spread like wildfire.

Against all odds and her husband's wishes, a downtrodden housewife in Burkina Faso sets out to earn enough money to educate her daughter. But just when success seems to be in reach, she is forced to confront a saboteur — as well as the prejudices and expectations of society where women are discouraged from working. Based on a true story, Bintou casts a comic spotlight on the classic battle between the sexes.

After a lion kills the village leader, the expected rains fail to arrive, so a group of warriors are sent to hunt the lion down and kill it in hopes that the rains will come at last.

Memory between Two Shores tells the story of the French colonisation of the Lobi area . No village or family in this region of South-western Burkina Faso will ever forget. Juxtaposed with the written records of the administrators, the oral tradition calls up a century of history, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the present day. The vitality of the spoken word also bears witness to the legacy of this painful past, at the individual, social and religious level. From the past to the present, from the spoken word to the writings of the colonial administrators, «Memory between two Shores» is as much Lobi’s quest for identity as a reflection upon «France the Great Civiliser».

An African student stranded in Paris after losing his government grant discovers a bag of drugs and money while working as a parking garage attendant.

Mamadi is struggling to complete a doctorate at a Parisian university after the government of his country has stopped paying his scholarship. Thanks to his acquaintances in the African community, he finds a job as night watchman in an underground car park. There, a French colleague, Franck, helps the friendly African academic getting around. However, the car park is also a meeting point for dubious characters, and when Mamadi accidentally wrecks a drug trafficking operation, Franck is really hard-pressed to put his pal and himself out of harm's way. Wouldn't Mamadi's home country be the ideal place to escape the gangsters' wrath?

Monday's Girls explores the conflict between modern individualism and traditional communities in today's Africa through the eyes of two young Waikiriki women from the Niger delta. Although both come from leading families in the same large island town, Florence looks at the iria women's initiation ceremony as an honor, while Azikiwe, who has lived in the city for ten years, sees it as an indignity. Ngozi Onwurah, director of such feminist classics as Coffee Coloured Children and Body Beautiful, herself an Anglo-Nigerian, turns a wry but sympathetic eye on the cross-cultural confusions. The five week long iria ritual is overseen by post-menopausal women headed by the redoubtable Monday Moses (hence the title.) The girls are paraded bare-breasted before the entire community so their nipples can be examined to determine whether they are still virgins. They are then confined to the "fattening rooms," their legs immobilized in copper impala rings, where they are pampered and fed. Finally, the girls, now women, are presented to society, wearing yards of fabric around their waists indicating each family's wealth - and suggesting pregnancy. The film traces the girls' contrasting responses to each stage of the ritual. Florence, who is Monday's granddaughter, comments at the end of the ceremony, "I'm not fat, but I am grown up now," but even she decides to postpone marriage until she completes her education. Azikiwe refuses to bare her breasts and, as a result, her father is fined by the outraged villagers and she is sent back to the city in disgrace. She concludes: "There are some traditions people should forget." Monday's Girls calls into question the idea of a single, "ethnographically correct" representation of tradition. Rituals are revealed as fluid, polysemous texts, social contracts continuously renegotiated between individuals and communities. For millions of Africans like Azikiwe, tradition is increasingly seen as a matter of individual choice not social coercion.

Kala Azar is a deadly, yet treatable parasitic disease which affects half a million people a year across the world. It is endemic in many parts of India and east Africa, including the Pokot region of northwest Kenya, where international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has had great success with a treatment programme. But lack of access to information and adequate medical care in much of Kenya allows Kala Azar to kill thousands of people every year.

Elephantiasis affects millions of people worldwide and although it can be prevented, the disease has no cure and access to treatment in the developing world is hampered by stigma and poor health infrastructure.

Nodding disease first emerged in the Sudan in the 1980s. A neurological disease characterized by episodes of nodding and seizures, it now affects a growing number of children in Uganda, Sudan and Tanzania. There is little understanding of the disease, no known treatment and no cure.

The Hero (O Herói) is the story of Angola, a nation torn apart by forty years of uninterrupted war, and now trying imperfectly but courageously to piece itself back together. It is also the story of a city, Luanda, trying to absorb the millions of people displaced by civil strife and global economic change.

Zézé Gamboa, director of the film, has stated that he considers himself in the camp of African filmmakers who see their work as contributing directly to the task of national reconstruction. “The Hero is a universal story. In Central Europe, Latin America, Africa and in all the places where there is or there was war, hundreds of thousands must deal with the stigma, try to survive and become a part of post-war society. The aim of this movie is to show children - the former instruments of war—that it is possible to live in peace.”The central character of the film, the hero of the title, is Vitório. We meet him at a hospital where he has been waiting for months for a prosthetic leg to replace the one he lost after stepping on a landmine, ironically in the last months of Angola’s civil war. He was impressed into service at age fifteen while at a seminary and has been fighting for twenty years since. A doctor finally takes pity on him and gives him a new leg; Vitório is compared to someone beginning a new life. But the decorated war veteran encounters little sympathy and much prejudice for an unskilled soldier with a prosthetic limb as he scours Luanda looking for a job…

"Our bodies ... their battlegrounds" highlights the crisis facing women, girls and infants throughout the world, both during conflict and in its wake. This film gives a voice to victims of rape in The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia, and seeks to challenge the culture of impunity that allows this violence to continue unchecked. In 2005, IRIN was awarded the first prize for Our Bodies... their battleground: Gender-based Violence during Conflict - September 2004 from Stories from the Field Film Festival, the annual UN Documentary Film Festival.

A concert given in Zimbabwe, Africa, by singer Paul Simon, featuring such South African musicians as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela.

Against the background of peace talks aimed at ending more than two decades of civil war in Sudan, a vicious new civil conflict erupted in the western province of Darfur in early 2003. Tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced.

The film opens with a striking image: seven children in rags, aged 7 to 19, crawl out from under a Brazzaville market stall where they have spent the night. Moussa Touré picks up with them there and then continues to film as they go about their business in the city, looking for food and odd jobs. Taking advantage of his closeness to the children, the filmmaker sets out to take each back to his family. But the road back is beset with difficulties that exemplify the state of Congolese society.

Across sub-Saharan Africa millions of girls and women battle the medical, social and psychological scars of Female Genital Mutilation.

In 1994, between April and July, the massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus left one million dead. Instigated by Fest’Africa, a dozen African authors met four years after the events as writers in residence at Kigali, to try to break the silence of African intellectuals on this genocide. In May 2000, on the occasion of the publication of series of works based on this experience, writers and artists from Africa and elsewhere gathered in Rwanda. Facing up to the scars left by the genocide, Samba Felix N’Diaye manages to find just the right sense of distance to film the inexpressible while nevertheless communicating a message of hope.

The plot centers on students involved in the Soweto Riots, in opposition to the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. The character Sarafina (Leleti Khumalo) feels shame at her mother's (Miriam Makeba) acceptance of her role as domestic servant in a white household in apartheid South Africa, and inspires her peers to rise up in protest, especially after her inspirational teacher, Mary Masombuka (Whoopi Goldberg) is imprisoned.

Donald Woods is chief editor at the liberal newspaper Daily Dispatch in South Africa. He has written several editorials critical of the views of Steve Biko. But after having met him for the first time, he changes his views. They meet several times, and this means that Woods and his family get attention from the security police. When Steve Biko dies in police custody, he writes a book about Biko. The only way to get it published is for Woods himself to illegally escape the country.

Performing her household chores in the women's compound, mom explains how patriarchal tradition dictated Wassangari children be raised without strong maternal bonds. Girls, once valued only as wives and mothers, nowadays have begun to leave their husbands, study, and run their own small businesses. Only at film's end does Mora-Kpai reveal that, by virtue of her aristocratic birth, his mother has become queen of the region and leads a parallel life as a traveling regent. Alexandra Kordes' fine lensing and rigorous framing capture gorgeous African scenes, while Marianne Entat's music selection mixes Western and local sounds.

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The kind of informative ethnographic docu pubcaster audiences will enjoy, "Si-Gueriki, the Queen Mother" offers an insider's view into a Wassangari tribal village in Benin, where the women work and the men idle under trees. Everything is seen through the amused, respectful eyes of young helmer and expat Idrissou Mora-Kpai, who moved to Germany to study filmmaking. His initial intention to recount the life of his proud warrior father, now deceased, is overturned when, for the first time, he gets to know his mother and discovers she is not the lowly vassal he thought.

Performing her household chores in the women's compound, mom explains how patriarchal tradition dictated Wassangari children be raised without strong maternal bonds. Girls, once valued only as wives and mothers, nowadays have begun to leave their husbands, study, and run their own small businesses. Only at film's end does Mora-Kpai reveal that, by virtue of her aristocratic birth, his mother has become queen of the region and leads a parallel life as a traveling regent. Alexandra Kordes' fine lensing and rigorous framing capture gorgeous African scenes, while Marianne Entat's music selection mixes Western and local sounds.

Kombi is a poverty-stricken city dominated by a tyrant king. In order to bring back prosperity, the king is advised by his priests to make the traditional human sacrifice of a young virgin to a mystical snake god. Sia, the most beautiful young woman of the village, has been designated. Lieutenant Mamadi, her fiancé, rebels against the decision to perform this ritual and the village becomes divided. Struggles and revelations follow as the characters confront issues of honour, corruption and power.

The documentary offers a totally factinating, often hilarious look at the work of one small courthouse in Cameroon. With fierce compassion, the tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and cour president Beatrice Ntuba dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair maeasure.

Worldwide, more than a billion people live in slums. As many as one million of them in the Kenyan slum of Kibera. Slum Survivors tells the stories of a few of them and charts their remarkable courage in the face of extreme poverty.

After years of conflict and isolation, Somalia finds itself once more on the brink. Much of the country is now under the control of the Union of Islamic Courts, but will Somalia´s new actor bring security and development or set it on the path to regional conflict?

Amputee Football profiles the determination of a Sierra Leonean man to keep playing the game he loves despite losing a leg during his country’s long and vicious civil war.

Surviving Polio highlights the many difficulties that confront a polio survivor now living in one of Nairobi’s biggest and dirtiest slums.

Mental disability is a taboo subject in many parts of the developing world. But here in the west of Kenya, Poroko special school for the disabled is fighting to change that.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Three decades ago, Wangari Maathai suggested to rural women in her native Kenya that they plant trees for firewood and to stop soil erosion — an act that grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, defend human rights, and fight government injustice. The tree-planting groups that formed gave the women a reason to come together and become involved in resolving their communities’ challenges.

Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai tells the story of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and follows Maathai, the movement’s founder and the first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Maathai discovered her life’s work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were walking long distances for firewood, and that clean water was scarce. The soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition. “Well, why not plant trees?” she suggested.

Maathai soon discovered that tree planting had a ripple effect of empowering change. In the mid-1980s, Kenya was ruled by the repressive regime of Daniel arap Moi, whose dictatorship outlawed group gatherings and the right of association. In tending their nurseries, women had a legitimate reason to gather outside their homes and discuss the roots of their problems. They soon found themselves working against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and government corruption; they became a national political force that helped to bring down the country’s 24-year dictatorship.

Using archival footage and first-person accounts, the film documents dramatic political confrontations of 1980s and 1990s Kenya and captures Maathai’s infectious determination and unwavering courage through in-depth conversations with the film’s subjects.

A comedy set in contemporary Burkina Faso, Tasuma tells the story of a World War II veteran who has been trying for more than 50 years to obtain his well-deserved military pension. Convinced that he will be paid shortly, Sogo buys a mill on credit for the village. But the money does not arrive. When Sogo is put in prison because he cannot reimburse his loan, the women of the village rally to set him free.

A palm plantation in a Saharan oasis. An innocent tryst between Amin and Myriam is interrupted by her brothers who beat Amin senseless, claiming Myriam has dishonoured her family. Amin’s brother raises the alarm and soon the two clans are ready for violence.

Myriam takes refuge in a temple. A meeting of the town elders is called to quell the violence. Meanwhile, roadblocks are put up and the town is sectioned off into no-go zones. Myriam returns to her family to await her uncle’s return (her father is dead) and Amin is sent into exile to live with Houria du Ksar and Sage Omar in an abandoned citadel.

Tempted by his cousin, Amin is chided by Houria for his weak heart. He visits Myriam who has been examined, found intact and chained up at her family house. Myriam escapes with the help of her mother and finds comfort with Houria. Myriam’s uncle returns furious and hastily arranges her marriage. Myriam reluctantly returns but panics during her wedding feast and kills her bridegroom. She returns to Amin and mass violence breaks out in the oasis. The next morning, the lovers discover hardly anyone is left alive. Houria leaves Sage Omar on his landlocked boat. He beseeches a young boy to join him before the flood but the child rejects his offer and moves on.

During 2004, several West-African countries were affected by the worst locusts invation in 15 years. Millions of hectars of fields and pastures were infested in Mauritania, Senegal, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, the Gambia and Cap Verde, causing a major food security threat for those countries.

The Eighth Plague looks at the origins of the current catastrophe, its devastating consequences for affected population, and the possible solutions to prevent such a disaster in the future.

In April 2002, UNITA rebels signed a ceasefire with the Angolan government bringing to an end more than 30 years of civil war. As soon as the ceasefire was signed millions of Angolans displaced by the fighting began to make a long journey home.

But even with the advent of peace the legacy of war looms large over Angola and its people. Decades of war have left the country in the grip of a structural emergency and in many places of return there are no schools, health posts or jobs. Land mines, by contrast, are everywhere. The Long Journey Home explores the many challanges that await them on their return.

A poverty-stricken father tries to make ends meet for himself and his family. The wily Ananse desperately exploits contemporary realities for a way out.

In Northern Uganda the bells of peace are starting to ring out. But after two decades of death, displacement and trauma, the obstacles on the path toward peace could be just as challenging as the war itself.

Thomas Sankara rose to power in a popularly supported coup in 1983 and renamed his country to Burkina Faso, "Land of Upright Men" and launched the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted in African.

The wall paintings of the Kassenas women in Burkina Faso, near the border with Ghana, are famous for the beauty of their patterns and the harmony of their colours. In looking at this subject, Katy Lena Ndiaye has chosen to compare and contrast tradition with modernity, seen through the intertwined portraits of three old women and their "grand-daughter", whom they are initiating in their ancestral art. She has made a film whose aesthetic is fully under control, a genuine portrait of an artistic community preoccupied with the issue of how to hand down traditions, of education and memory in an Africa undergoing fundamental change.

In the wake of his stepfather’s death, Thomas Allen Harris embarks on a journey of reconciliation with the man who raised him as a son but whom he could never call "father." As part of the first wave of black South African exiles, Harris’s stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng, and his eleven comrades left their home in Bloemfontein in 1960. They told the world about the brutality of the apartheid system and raised support for the fledgling African National Congress and its leader, Nelson Mandela. Drawing upon the memories of the surviving disciples and their families, along with the talent of young South African actors who portray their harrowing experiences,Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela tells an intimate story of family and home against the backdrop of a global movement for freedom. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), in association with P.O.V./American Documentary and the National Black Programming Consortium.

The documentary focuses on the tragic humanitarian impact of the conflict, and in particular highlights the vulnerability of children. The film illustrates how thousands of children walk many kilometers every evening to find shelter in the relative safety of towns or camps, for fear of being abducted by the rebels. In towns they sleep in public buildings or the street. These 'night commuters' of northern Uganda are a sober symbol of the terror at large in a conflict the Ugandan government and international community seem unable to end.

Years of political and criminal violence have kept the Central African Republic among the poorest countries in the world. Rebels, soldiers and kidnapping gangs have spread terror in much of the north, where the central government barely exists. More than 200,000 people have fled their homes many of them to squalid conditions in the bush. Even those who have returned home do not feel safe.

A Trip to the Country is a voyage in search of the illusion of modernity, which haunts Cameroonian society; a kind of "tropical modernity" which can be summarized as follows: Everything from Europe is modern, while all things local are archaic and must be discarded.

Filmmaker Dumisani Phakathi returns to his old neighborhood. With a camera on his shoulder, he engages with friends to discuss relationships, sex and love. Strong characters like Phumla and Timothy expose their emotions as they talk intimately about the realities of their street and the choices they have been forced to make. It 's a rock and roll journey that reveals the gaps between everyday life and the AIDS education campaigns that often talk past the very people they are supposed to address. It is the recognition of the people's will to survive in the age of AIDS.

Director Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, My Brother's Wedding,To Sleep with Anger) presents a tale about a young boy's encounter with his family in Mississippi in the 1950s, and intergenerational tensions between the heavenly strains of gospel and the devilish moans of the blues.

Warrior Marks is a poetic and political film about female genital mutilation from the director of A place of Rage, presented by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy. Female genital mutilation affects one hundred million of the world´s women and this remarkable film unlocks some of the cultural and political complexities surrounding this issue. Interviews with women from Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, the US and England who are concerned with and affected by genital mutilation are intercut with Walker´s own personal reflections on the subject.

Seydina Insa Wade had his hour of glory in the 1970s. After his departure for France in the 1980s, where he performed in jazz clubs, Seydina Insa Wade was somewhat forgotten by his countrymen and women. Observing that the new generation in Senegal was unfamiliar with his music, he decided to regain contact with his country and returned to Dakar to record his latest numbers. Ousmane William Mbaye followed this return to the home country for two years, and the friendship which grew up between the two men provides us with a sensitive and highly personal portrait of the musician: through his personal statements and songs, we discover a constantly moving, multifaceted personality.

As the founder of folk music in Senegal, Seydina Insa Wade had his hour of glory in the 1970s. After his departure for France in the 1980s, where he performed in jazz clubs, Seydina Insa Wade was somewhat forgotten by his countrymen and women. Observing that the new generation in Senegal was unfamiliar with his music, he decided to regain contact with his country and returned to Dakar to record his latest numbers. Ousmane William Mbaye followed this return to the home country for two years, and the friendship which grew up between the two men provides us with a sensitive and highly personal portrait of the musician: through his personal statements and songs, we discover a constantly moving, multifaceted personality.

Robert Mugabe, anti-colonial guerrilla leader, triumphant victor of the first general election for an independent Zimbabwe, and President for over two decades, gets himself re-elected for another six years. But... to achieve this he has to hound, torture and kill the opposition and their supporters, trigger agricultural chaos and economic ruin, and rig the elections.

Michael Raeburn is a privileged witness of these historical moments and of their aftermath. He grew up in the capital Harare where he also went to university. In 1969 he turned the tables on his British colonial ancestors by making'Rhodesia Countdown' advocating guerrilla war against the white minority government of Ian Smith. After his expulsion from the country, he also wrote the book'Black Fire' in support of the African war effort and of his hero, Robert Mugabe, to whom he became increasingly linked as this film shows.