Africa

Best African Films

Africa is the heart of the world. Heaped with incredible cultural diversity the continent is a force in the film world that is destined to breach across to cinemas worldwide in the future. You may already have seen some of the best African films featured below already. For example, 2009’s District 9 – an ingenious documentary style science fiction set in South Africa made it big overseas. Africa also has it’s own Hollywood in Nigeria’s Nollywood, which churns out almost as many films as Bollywood every year.

Find the best African films below. My advice would be to start with Black Girl and work your way up to Timbuktu.

Or if you’re looking for the best films from a particular country, head straight to their country pages using the links below:

Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

*We’re still looking for the best African films from countries without pages. Send us your recommendations.

Flame – Two Girls Fighting for Equality and Independence

Flame Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

You might have seen Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now but how many female fronted war films have you seen? Flame follows two young women who leave their rural village to join the Zimbabwean fight for liberation. However, their fight isn’t just for an independent Zimbabwe free from colonial influence, but also a fight for female liberation from the abuse and subjugation of the patriarchy.

From: Zimbabwe, Africa
Watch: YouTube, Kanopy, Rent on Vimeo
Next: Lucia, War Witch, Battle of Algiers

Sambizanga – A Woman Struggling Alongside the Fight for Independence

Sambizanga Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

If you’re looking for a snapshot of the people’s struggle for Angolan independence, you’ve come to the right place. Sambizanga follows a woman as she tries to track down her husband with her newborn baby. Meanwhile, in the background, the Angolan liberation movement slowly builds momentum. The director, Sarah Maldoror, worked with Gillo Pontecurvo on The Battle of Algiers before directing Sambizanga so it’s no surprise there are plenty of links between the two. If you need another reason to watch, it’s also one of the first feature films directed by a woman of colour.

From: Angola, Africa
Watch: YouTube (not good quality but can't find anywhere else)
Next: The Battle of Algiers, Flame, Lucia

Asmaa (Egypt)

Asmaa Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Can you imagine a place where TV adverts about HIV/AIDS show scary images of bats, blood, drugs, and prostitutes? Well, you don’t have to. Egypt actually showed these adverts. In Asmaa director Amr Salama challenges the social prejudice towards HIV/AIDS suffers. Watch this film to learn about the limitations of being a HIV/AIDS patient and a woman in Egypt.

Why Watch Asmaa?

Follow the life of a woman with HIV battling against social prejudice in Egypt
Watch the film here on YouTube to start your adventure into Egyptian film
Experience a bit of life in Cairo and the country surrounding the capital

The Breakdown

First of all, it is important to know that there is a bit social stigma around the HIV positive in Egypt. The director, Amr Salama, states:

“In Egypt we think it’s a punishment from God and we should not treat it. We think that they get it from a sin so they deserve it, and we think it’s very contagious so we don’t deal with them in any way. So people die from that more than they die from anything else. “

Asmaa starts in a small HIV group, a bit like an alcoholics anonymous group. The director cuts between the group talking and scenes in a hospital. We find out that our protagonist Asmaa has HIV and was denied hospital treatment because of it.

Asmaa is a do it all mother. She looks after her father, her daughter, whilst working shifts at the airport. Through flash backs to her former life, we learn how she caught HIV and her former dreams. Her flashbacks are shown in golden colours which contrast with the dreary blue and grey filter that depicts her current life and her visits to the hospital. It is obvious she wishes to recapture the dreams of her early life with her former husband.

Conclusion

Asmaa is an important tale based on the true stories of many HIV/AIDS suffers that Salama met when filming a documentary before he filmed Asmaa. The film reveals the plight of women in Egypt as well as the social prejudice against HIV/AIDS patients. It challenges the controversial portrayal of HIV/AIDS in Egypt by putting you in the shoes of a strong woman coping with the disease.

Supa Modo – Online African Film Festival 2020

If you like heartwarming stories of communities coming together you’ll love Supa Modo. Happy tears are pretty much guaranteed.

Supa Modo focuses on Jo, a young girl with a terminal illness, who is brought home by her mother and sister from the daycare where she lives with other kids like her. The only problem is that at home, she’s far away from her friends at the daycare. Instead of watching her favorite Kung Fu movies with her friends, her mum keeps her locked up indoors and buried under blankets to keep her protected from the outside world. Jo’s situation is more heartbreaking because despite her young age, she’s acutely aware of her mortality (“we all leave someday”) and seems to sense that her end is nearer now that her mother has brought her home.

Luckily for Jo, her neighbors want to help her feel special for her last few weeks on earth. They come together to help turn her into a superhero. The stunts they pull are a lot like the real life heartwarming story of Batkid, where San Francisco came together to turn a young cancer patient into Batman for the day. It demonstrates the power of film – they help people to escape from whatever troubles their experiencing; to generate happiness; and to bring people together.

Supa Modo is also a welcome alternative to the typical African festival film that focuses on war, poverty, and aids. It’s a perfect example of the Afro-Bubblegum style (see Akasha and Rafiki): a style that expands the view of Africa and who Africans are internationally with films that make art that is fun, frivolous, and fierce. It’s also refreshing to see a young character with a terminal illness that isn’t a white American (see Fault in their Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl); all young people around the world experience the same depressing illnesses. So if you’re looking for a new African film that presents a different ‘African’ story to the war, poverty, and aids stories that typically make the festival circuit, check out the heartbreaking but inspiring Supa Modo.

Redemption – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Redemption starts with Bruno making his way home after being released from prison. He’s welcomed back by his loving wife and newborn, and gets the keys of his mother’s house from his aunt. It also doesn’t take long for him to find a job in a warehouse nearby. With a house, a job, and a wife and baby, Bruno has everything he needs to be happy. However, things change when the ‘bank’ demands Bruno to pay them $30,000 for a loan his dead mother took out or else they’ll take over his house.

The bank/loan shark that demands money from Bruno is the reason why Bruno regresses to his former life of crime. However, even before they ask for the money, there’s signs that Bruno hasn’t given up his former life. The first indication of this is when he returns to his dead mother’s house on his own and immediately locates his old gun and a roll of U.S. dollars. Instead of throwing the gun away, he returns it to it’s hidden spot when his wife arrives. He knows that if she sees them, she’ll tell him to get rid of them or she’ll leave.

It was also hard to ignore the amount of smoking and drinking in this film. Every other minute, Bruno pauses, lights up a cigarette, and seems to use that break to think. Maybe he’s thinking about the money he could make in the crime world, maybe he’s thinking about moving to South Africa as Mia wants, it’s not clear. What is clear however, is that he smokes a lot. It’s an addiction he hasn’t got rid of. At a stretch, his addiction to smoke and drink are two vices that reveal his weakness for good feelings, and hint that he’s not strong enough to resist the golden allure of returning to crime. Towards the end of the film, Mia even starts smoking, as if it’s a sign that she’s addicted to Bruno and can’t leave him. Like Bruno, she has her chance to leave, but she can’t break her ties to the city.

Bruno’s fate is all but confirmed in the scene when he takes on his first crime job since leaving prison. In it, the camera never moves from the front yard of Bruno’s house as he leaves with his former colleagues and steps into their car. When he is in his front yard, there’s nothing between him and the camera. But once he’s outside his yard, we see him enter his crime boss’ car from behind his yard’s wire fence. Seeing him behind fencing makes it look as if he’s just stepped back into prison. It’s a point of no return for Bruno and his chance at redemption.

However, even though we can blame Bruno for resorting to crime to pay his loans, Redemption makes sure you know that there’s a corrupt system behind his eviction. The big crime boss that Bruno works for appears in a scene paying one of the people working for the bank that demands Bruno repay his mother’s loan. Linking the crime boss to the bank lenders assimilates their actions. Both of them ruthlessly demand money from people who can’t afford them and both of them rob people without sympathy. So if the bank lenders can demand a ridiculous amount of money from Bruno that he didn’t borrow, why shouldn’t he criminally demand a ridiculous amount of money from someone else too.

Head to our Pan African Film Festival Hub for more reviews and short films from the Pan African Film Festival 2020.