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.

Layla Fourie (South Africa) – How Long Can You Hold a Lie?

Layla Fourie Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Up for a slow-burning thriller with racial undertones? Here’s Layla Fourie, a young single mum in South Africa trying to earn an honest living. Unfortunately for her, an accident may derail all hopes of a normal life.

Why Watch Layla Fourie?

You like a good slow burning thriller
For the excellent acting of Layla’s son!
To hear one of the best (and simplest) interview questions
To continue exploring South African film (check out Tsotsi and District 9 first)

The Breakdown

Layla Fourie starts with what sounds like a doctor quizzing a woman about her health. Does she drink alcohol? Sometimes after work. Has she driven under the influence? Strange question for a doctor, but no. As the person asks her another question (has she ever lied?) the camera shows a lie test followed by a black hand tied to a pulse detector. It’s all part of a job interview, but it seems more like an interrogation. Luckily for Layla Fourie, she’s all lie-free.

However, at night the first piece of foreshadowing spells trouble: a car crash outside Layla’s apartment. The next night, whilst driving in the early hours of the morning with her young son, Layla is lost. She is obviously disorientated, she has to stop to look at a map and keeps flicking her headlights on and off (which doesn’t help clear up the darkness of the night). A few minutes later her son wakes up from a slumber and distracts her enough to crash into a man whose car has broken down.

Now it’s Layla’s time to lie. She becomes more suspicious of everyone and much less assured. Can she get away with what she’s done or will she be found out?

Conclusion

Whilst some of the coincidences seem a little bit too contrived, the film does keep up the tension for a lot of the film. If you’re into thrillers, especially those that delve into racism, then this film might just be for you.

Dakan – Homophobia Disrupting the Future of Two Guineans

Dakan Film Difficulty Ranking: 3

Dakan is the first Sub-Saharan African film to deal with homosexuality. The focus of the film is the plight of two high school lovers in a society rejects them. They don’t fit into traditional or modern Guinean society, shown through Manga’s ‘traditional’ mother and Sori’s ‘modern’ father. As a result, they’re condemned to a life without love.

From: Guinea, Africa
Watch: YouTube, Vimeo, Kanopy
Next: Jose, I Am Not a Witch, Tanna

The Breakdown

Dakan experienced a lot of protests in Guinea during its production, and once you see the first scene, you’ll understand why. For many countries around the world, homosexuality is taboo or illegal, so to have an opening scene of two men making out in an orange convertible like a scene from an American hetero high school romance is a bit of a shock for the world’s conservative viewers.

The two lovers are both high school students hoping to get into university. They openly show affection for each other at school, where they are largely accepted and left alone, but at home their relationship provides a source of friction for their parents. For Manga’s single mother, she sees Manga’s relationship with Sori as a curse that will deprive her of grandchildren. In contrast, Sori’s father sees Sori’s relationship with Manga as a distraction from his studies and his prosperous future in business.

They also differ in their way of stopping their son’s relationship. Manga’s mum relies on traditional methods, sending Manga away to a traditional witch doctor to be cured. In contrast, Sori’s father, a ‘modern’ businessman, sends Sori to work for him in his company. However, neither route changes how they feel about each other. Their solemn faces throughout the film only emphasizes that there is no place for them in a traditional society founded on the family, or a ‘modern’ society founded on economic growth. There’s no place for their love in Guinea.

Overall Dakan is a good African film that uses homophobia to talk about the common African and third cinema tropes of modernity and tradition. There was a moment in Dakan where I feared the film would turn into an HIV disaster film like Kijiji Changu but fortunately Mohamed Camara doesn’t diminish the relatively progressive portrayal of homosexuality in Africa.

What to Watch Next

If you’re looking for more films from the global south that portray homosexual relationships in countries that don’t have a place for it, check out Jose from Guatemala and Rafiki from Kenya.

Or for more witch doctors trying to cure people in Africa, Zambia’s unique I Am Not A Witch is a must watch.

Finally for more films that feature Romeo + Juliet relationships that are forbidden by society, check out Tanna, featuring an controversial relationship that crosses tribes in Vanuata.

Veve (Kenya) – Corruption and Extortion in Kenyan Politics

Veve Film Difficulty Ranking: 2

Drugs, corruption, and extra-marital affairs feature in this Kenyan thriller centred around a macho politician. If you’re looking for excitement, danger, and a token white guy, this film is for you. Check it out here on Netflix.

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Why Watch Veve?

To meet one of Kenya’s ‘Big Men’
Learn what Veve is (known elsewhere as Khat)
For a token white guy
See how to defeat unions and oppress farmers

The Breakdown

People picking trees, leaves filling sacks, sacks thrown onto trucks, money changing hands… Veve starts with some quick cuts showing the distribution of veve from the trees it grows on to Kenya’s cities. Along the way it passes through a bunch of middle men and check points. You’ll also see money changing hands a few times along the way, but who does the money end up with?

The next scene reveals the prime candidate behind the drug-trafficking. Meet Amos, a local member of parliament campaigning to become governor of the region. Judged on first impressions, he’s a friendly husband who is popular in the region he is campaigning to govern. However, there’s more to Amos that meets the eye.

Simply put, he’s the prototype of the macho African ‘big man’ politician.

Firstly, you’ll see how he uses intimidation to try and guarantee votes. He tries to extort local businessmen as well as threaten farmers to vote for him. Secondly, you’ll witness his machismo. The director intentionally shows him criticise his wife for buying scented body lotion and chide his secretary for playing kid’s puzzles. Just in case that’s too subtle, he’s also cheating on his wife. He’s not a nice man.

Conclusion and What to Watch Next

By giving Amos the characteristics of the ‘big man’ politician the director uses Amos to critique the power hungry men in Kenyan politics. It’s a subtle warning carried in a thrilling film well worth watching.

If you want to see more African ‘big men’ on screen, check out Last King of Scotland, a political thriller with Forrest Whitaker playing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Or if you want to see African films with more violence and corruption, check out Beasts of No Nation featuring kid soldiers in an unnamed African country. You can also check out the living perpetrators of the Liberian Civil War in Fragment 53.

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret – PAFF 2020

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret takes us back to Jaki’s childhood living in a coastal African town with his Granma, family, and friends. There’s no sign of school or any other schedule filling activities for young Jaki, so he creates his own entertainment with his friends Pi and Charlita. They start investigating the construction site of a huge mausoleum guarded by Russian soviets. Their innocent adventures uncover the Russian’s plot to demolish their neighborhood, so they plan to foil it by setting off their secret explosives.

Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret revolves around Jaki’s childhood in the 1980s. The characters give the film (and award winning African novel by Ondjaki) its flavor. There’s Jaki and his two friends, a trio of innocent adventurers that Americans will recognize from many 1980s U.S. films such as The Goonies or E.T. There’s a loving Granma that never loses her spirit even when her toe is covered in gangrene. You’ll also meet two foreigners fighting for her company in a Portuguese speaking Russian and a Spanish speaking Cuban doctor. None of the characters are threatening or unfriendly, even ‘Sea Foam’, the only homeless man in the film is friendly and happy. It creates the kind of neighborhood you wished you grew in.

The film is also told in flash back, of an older Jaki reminiscing on his childhood. This flash back narrative adds to films saudade, a classic feeling in Portuguese language novels and films which describes feelings of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia for an object that you’ll probably never have again. In this case, it’s Jaki’s saudade for his happy and innocent childhood. The director emphasizes his good memories by coloring the memories of his childhood town in warm pastel colors and filling the story with only happy memories. Eradicating the greys and downplaying the threat of the Soviet construction work and the absence of Jaki’s parents keeps the story positive in a way that only a person looking back on their life with saudade could.

Whilst I haven’t read Ondjaki’s novel, João Ribeiro’s adaptation is a heart warming coming of age story told through the rose tinted lenses of Jaki looking back on his childhood.

Head to our Pan African Film Festival Hub for more reviews from PAFF 2020.

Desrances – Pan African Film Festival 2020

In the opening of Desrances, Francis is out fishing when he hears gun shots from the shore. He races back to his family home to find his mother and relatives shot dead by insurgents in the 2004 Haitian coup d’état. It’s a traumatic totem he still carries approximately 15 years later in his new life in Cote d’Ivoire.

In Cote d’Ivoire, his life is normal. He has helped make a happy family with his wife and 12 year old daughter, and runs a shop with his father in law which provides him with enough to afford his nice sized apartment. His life gets even better when he finds out his wife is expecting the son he’s wished for. He’s so excited for his future son that he even names him well in advance and starts building his crib. However, in his excitement he fails to spot the familiar signs of a civil war brewing in the country and that his daughter is becoming more distant.

The turning point of Desrances arrives with the news that all of the most dangerous prisoners of the country have escaped (an event that actually happened in 2017). It’s at this point that the film turns into a post-apocalyptic style thriller with a group of stereotypical prisoners, that wouldn’t be out of place in a DC movie, providing the antagonists to Francis and his family. Out of the blue, the group turns up at Francis’ house with guns and machetes in an attempted robbery. Francis and his family manage to escape, and rush to the hospital with Francis’ wife in labor. However, as Francis’ PTSD kicks in, he loses track of time and reawakens at home alone with his daughter, with his wife and new-born missing.

The second half of Desrances follows Francis as he runs around Abidjan looking for the group of prisoners who have kidnapped his missing wife and son. The city has quickly become a desolate urban wasteland with supermarkets full of empty shelves, deserted streets, and bands of people assembling to stake their claims to sectors of Abidjan. These are all signs of your typical post-apocalyptic movie; signs which point to the futility of Francis’ search. However, if anyone could interpret the signs, it should be Francis. He has lived through the revolution in Haiti and experienced the trauma of war. However, out of blind desperation to meet his son he keeps looking no matter how hard his daughter tries to stop him.

Desrances draws on the 2017 escape of over 100 inmates from prisons in Cote D’Ivoire and the Ivorian Civil War to create a post-apocalyptic environment in Abidjan. Behind the chaos is a story about a father and daughter that have to reconnect after losing touch with each other, held together by great performances from Jimmy Jean-Louis and his daughter. It’s a well put together thriller that should have popular appeal.