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:
Life is Fare is a Tigrinya/English feature film exploring three different experiences of the Eritrean diaspora living in the U.S. It uses different styles (drama, documentary, animation, fantasy) to construct a range of views on what it means to be Eritrean and living abroad. So, if you’re looking for a unique exploration of the immigrant experience in the U.S. Life is Fare is a movie to add to your watch-list.
Hairareb follows the relationship between Hairareb, a middle-aged farmer, and Innis, his new bride. As they begin to get comfortable with their new life together, the secrets behind their marriage and from their past lives roll out into the open, creating a whirlwind of trouble for their budding relationship. Can they weather the storm, or will they fall back to the mistakes they made in the past?
There’s a lot going on in the opening scenes of the movie. The opening scene shows a man riding a horse into the sunset accompanied by a loud soundtrack and voiceover like a Hollywood Western. It introduces us to Hairareb’s narrative voice. The next shows a young man unlocking a chest of someone’s mementos. It’s not clear whose mementos or how he’s related to them. The film doesn’t give too many clues in the next few scenes either as it jumps straight to Hairareb and Innis’ wedding. From there, the jumping back and forth stops for a while, until the film delves into the two main character’s past lives, which by this point at least, helps to clear up some of the confusion from the start of the film and provide a bit of character development. However, for the most part, Hairareb feels unfocused. The drought, relationships, character backstories, and life in rural Namibia are all sacrificed for the sake of creating domestic melodrama, leaving the film feeling pretty hollow.
As you’ll notice from the start, this is a domestic melodrama. The loud soundtrack and overwrought narrative voice give that away. The use of a narrator feels a bit unnecessary at times, as everything Hairareb says could be built into a more natural script. It feels like it has been included to cut corners in the character building and plot to advance the plot quicker. It’s also always full of writing that feels a bit overdone, especially when it’s read alongside an overbearing soundtrack that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. The soundtrack also often gives away the direction of the scenes before they’re acted out. Upbeat musical interludes play a few scenes before the newlyweds are happy and the villains are given away before the reveals by the loud ominous soundtrack accompanying their face on screen. A little more subtlety may have created a bigger surprise for these reveals, however, viewers used to melodramas may not be as put off by these moments as it’s all part of the fun.
The language choices were also interesting. Whilst the film was mostly shot in English, there were some moments where the cast started speaking the indigenous Khoekhoe language. Presumably English was chosen for the film’s marketability abroad, but why not then just run the whole film in English for this reason? The Khoekhoegowab words seemed to be included randomly and not for certain characters or moments so it wasn’t clear why they were included. If the director wanted to include the language, it would have been great to have used Khoekhoe throughout the movie. I don’t believe it would have made much of a difference to the international audience viewing it and maybe the actors would have been more comfortable using it.
Overall, if you’re looking for a Namibian domestic melodrama, you’ve come to the right place. Every scene of Hairareb is filled with it, from the music to the relationship reveals. There’s also some beautifully framed shots of rural Namibia to showcase the landscape. However, if you’re not familiar with the domestic melodrama genre you’ll probably find this example overdone and lacking in substance.
In the city of Zinder, Niger, in the heart of the Sahel, young people form gangs to deal with the lack of work and prospects. These groups called “Palais” come from the Kara Kara district, historically home to lepers and outcasts. Zinder-born director and activist Aicha Macky returns to her hometown to tell the story of this disenfranchised youth. She talks with these men, whose bodies and the territory in which they live are scarred by the violence that has passed through them – a pervasive violence – the roots of which go back to the time of colonisation.
Zinder focuses on Siniya Boy, a member of the “Palais Hitler”, who wants to set up a security company with his fellow bodybuilders; and Bawa, a former Palais leader who turned taxi driver, haunted by memories of the atrocities committed. They live off black market petrol, smuggled from the Nigerian border.
The first scene is intended to shock the western viewer. It’s not everyday you see black men flying Hitler’s name surrounded by swastikas. That’s exactly what the “Palais Hitler” gang does, however not for the reasons we’d expect. They ‘heard he was an invincible warrior from America,’ which if it were true would make him a pretty good choice for weightlifting gang’s mascot. The director doesn’t correct them on their oversight. Just as viewers from outside of Africa probably don’t know much about Niger, it’s weirdly refreshing to find out that these Nigeriens don’t know much about U.S/European history and aren’t stuck on the U.S./European news cycle.
They’re definitely not perfect people. The taxi driver recounts his memories along the lines of the Indonesian genocide perpetrators in The Look of Silence. He speaks of the terrible crimes he committed and the young girls he and his gang raped. However, they’re also portrayed reformatively in the present. In this sense, the characters are a bit more like the life imprisoned inmates in The Prison Within. We see them for the crimes they committed as well as the reformed person they are now. By entering their feared neighborhood and giving them space to talk, Aicha Macky humanizes them.
In the present, they’re still being imprisoned, but imprisoned for their identity: both their past life and where they come from. They’re labeled as criminals because they’re from the Kara Kara neighborhood. The scars they carry from their previous lives only help the police and others to mark them. They inhibit their ability to get medical treatment, move across the city in taxis, and find work. Just because they were born in a rough neighborhood.
The personal tone of the documentary shows the failure of society to recognize them as anything but criminals. Their fierce reputation conflicts with how the director portrays them. Through the unrestricted access to their stories, we see that they’re just regular people forming ‘gangs’ for community and friendship. They seem warm and eager to talk and tell their story. We don’t see any fights or violence on screen, just many close up scars from the past. The only current proof of crime are the palais members currently in jail, but even this is up for debate as they argue they’ve been rounded up for past crimes.
Aicha Macky’s Zinder is an intimate tribute to the youth of her country. It offers a hopeful portrayal of those marked by the neighborhood they were born into.
Four people from different sides of Nairobi join a court-ordered anger management class with Counsellor Rose in Tales of the Accidental City. They each bring their own stories and banter to the Zoom call to create a quick one-location comedic overview of Nairobi society.
As called out in the opening titles, Tales of the Accidental City was originally created for the stage. It was adapted for film following the start of COVID-19 as the pandemic forced theaters to shut. It still resembles a play, as the focus is on the conversation and takes place completely in the single ‘location’ of a Zoom call. However, one benefit of converting Tales of the Accidental City for film is that all viewers are close enough to see the actors facial expressions. These are crucial for communicating the humor of the film which relies on the quick banter between characters. Without the close-ups we wouldn’t be able to see clearly how each of the character’s react to each other.
The humor seems to be built around local stereotypes with each of the 5 characters (including Counsellor Rose) representing a different part of Nairobi society. Louis represents the political elite, and fulfills the snobby, self-important stereotype. Counsellor Rose represents the Kenyan version of the cultural appropriating white hippie with Buddha poster on her wall and doing yoga to meditative music and candles. Jacinda’s character seems to be mocking the devout Christians of the middle class whilst Diana and Sarah represent the mothers and youth of the working class. Each character is exaggerated through their manner and their zoom backgrounds to create the associations with the stereotypes. Their equally flowing banter then makes fun of each of them, and the segments of Nairobi society they belong to.
If you’re looking for a simple Kenyan comedy, Tales of the Accidental City is worth a watch. Whilst the film is confined to the Zoom meeting room, it playfully makes fun of a few stereotypes of the city, giving the audience a few laughs and a small understanding of Nairobi society.
Delphine’s Prayers features a young Cameroonian woman baring her traumatic life story for the camera. In a personal one-on-one interview she recounts the death of her mother, her rape at 13, and her subsequent abandonment by her father which led her too an early life of prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ended up marrying an old Belgian man that brought her to Europe. She came with some hope of a better life, but that has since dissipated, leaving her in poverty again.
The whole film is shot in one room in Belgium with each of the ~10 segments centering Delphine in the middle of the frame. She’s the only character on camera in this documentary until the very last scene. She’s also the only one who speaks, discounting a few prompts from the director to guide her life stories. Without any other characters, and no cuts away from Delphine, the film’s focus is completely on Delphine, leaving no room for the viewer to get distracted from her storytelling. It makes the documentary feel much more intimate – especially as Delphine is incredibly open throughout the film – but also sometimes a bit intrusive as it feels like her traumatic life story is being exploited to represent a bigger message.
The bigger message is to present Delphine’s traumatic life as one example of a generation of young African women that have been crushed by patriarchal societies at home and abroad. This message is brought together at the end of the film in a short scene in which the director talks over a visual of Delphine braiding her hair, speaking of their friendship in Europe. Because of their different backgrounds, they wouldn’t have crossed paths at home in Cameroon. However, in Europe, they’re both just seen as Black African women – reminders of Belgium’s colonial past.
Whilst it does feel a bit exploitative at times, delving into a wide range of stories from Delphine’s traumatic life, Delphine’s Prayers does give a voice to one Black African woman in Europe to represent a part of the African immigrant experience in Europe.
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