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Kijiji Changu (My Village) – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Kijiji Changu focuses on the relationship between two very different best friends Makame and Saidi. Saidi is a young playboy. He doesn’t have a steady job but is quick to give away what he has to get any of the local women in his bed. In contrast, Makame has already grown up. He fishes to earn money for his family and is already married and trying to conceive a child. The only strife in his life is that his mum and wife Maryam don’t get along, because his wife hasn’t given her a grandchild. However, when Maryam sleeps with Makame’s best friend Saidi in a desperate attempt to conceive, she becomes pregnant. But, whilst it saves her marriage and pleases her mother in law, it proves to have disastrous consequences.

From the sound of it, Kijiji Changu should have a lot of drama. There’s adultery, promiscuity, and rivalries between a wife and her mother in law and two best friends. However, Kijiji Changu fails to translate any of this drama to the screen due to a lack of narrative focus and a repetitive soundtrack.

Firstly, the story is unfocused. The film begins by setting up the brotherly relationship between Makame and Saidi. In some scenes they’re best friends and others worst enemies, but it kind of makes sense, as after all, they are very different characters. The plot slowly moves on with Makame and Saidi being friends, then not talking, friends, then not talking, even after Saidi sleeps with Maryam. The adulterous act is a prime opportunity to spark some fire into their love triangle relationship, but instead of developing the drama, the film loses focus. Instead of wondering how his wife had got pregnant when he hasn’t been with her in the whole film, Makame blindly celebrates the news that Maryam is pregnant. The film then fades out and returns to the village 9 months later in which the focus of the film switches to a story about HIV. In doing so, the character rivalries the initial hour built up are pushed to the side.

Secondly, the repetitive soundtrack messes with the emotional tone of the film by playing the same song to very different visual scenes. For example, the same song is played when Saidi seduces a woman as when the mother in law scratches her tongue at Maryam, and when one man enters the hospital. Each of these three scenes should elicit a different emotional response from the audience, but because the same musical piece backs each of them, the tone is muted. Soundtracks usually guide our emotional response by matching the same music to scenes which share similar emotions visually. However, in this case, the soundtrack doesn’t always match the visual emotions which confuses how we are meant to perceive the film.

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

Right Near the Beach – Pan African Film Festival 2020

In Right Near the Beach, Jeffrey Jacobs, Jamaica’s world record breaking sprinter is beaten to death near his home. His murder sparks a frenzy of media coverage that digs into his friendship with a gay man. Jeffrey’s single father becomes a social pariah because of the reaction to his son’s death, living alone in the hills. It’s only when his youngest son returns that he is given a chance to transcend his isolation and grief.

Right Near the Beach tells its story effectively through the images and sounds it presents. Firstly, the film develops Terrence Malick’s visual style to create a more visceral feeling. Right Near the Beach still has the trademark wandering camera and meditative shots familiar to Malick’s films, but adds a varying shot length to better convey the varying emotions Jeffrey’s dad feels.

For most of the film, the average spot length feels longer than your typical Hollywood film. This gives the audience more time to watch the characters as they wander in rural Jamaica alone, allowing us to feel their search for inner peace. However, for a few key scenes, the emotional toll of the media and neighborhood gossip is too much for them and they release their frustration in sin scenes with frantically fast cutting. The quick shots that rapidly cut around Jeffrey’s dad when he starts axing a tree root creates an urgent feeling of blind rage that contrasts with the otherwise relaxed feelings generated by the longer shots. It’s one example of how the filmmakers brilliantly use shot lengths to change the feelings of each scene.

Secondly, the sound of Right Near the Beach provides the foundation for the visual experimentation. In the first half of the film, the soundtrack is dominated by a constant stream of radio show interviews with people discussing Jeffrey Jacobs’ homosexuality. The real homophobia you hear on air (these interviews were conducted with real Jamaicans) penetrates the silence of the rural area Jeffrey’s father lives. What he hears forces him deeper into isolation just to try and silence the country’s prejudice. This changes in the second half of the film, when the prejudiced voices that plague him start to ease after his youngest son’s arrival. They’re replaced by more natural sounds from the rural environment they live in, marking his successful coming to terms with his eldest son’s death. It’s as if he’s managed to meditate away the hateful media and replace it with a calm peace of mind. Just as the visceral visual style builds emotions, the sounds we hear guide us through Jeffrey’s dad’s grief.

To take the film full circle, the filmmakers end the film with the reunion of the dad and his youngest son. It’s a touching end to an emotional film that shows they have both transcended the deaths of their brother/son and mother/wife.

Right Near the Beach manages to accomplish a lot. Firstly, the editing and cinematography work incredibly well with the soundscape to depict the character’s raw emotion and path to overcoming their grief. Secondly, the full circle script gives the film a spiritual completeness that many films fail to achieve. But, that’s not all. Right Near the Beach also touches on the prejudice in Jamaica and how the country is largely overlooked internationally except for beaches and running (hence the ironic title). I’m excited to see more from these filmmakers.

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

Short Films from the 2020 Pan African Film Festival

Here’s some quick fire reviews from the short films featured in the Pan African Shorts Program of the 2020 Pan African Film Festival.

My Father Belize (Belize)

It’s great to see films being made in Belize, and My Father Belize definitely does the Belizean tourist board proud with shots of idyllic peninsulas where the jungle meets pristine beaches. The film focuses on Sean, a born and bred in Belizean that left the country in his teens for a life in the United States. He’s back in town for the first time in three years to scatter his fathers ashes; a father that was never there for him growing up. Sean has moved on from the death of his estranged father and is now engaged to someone from the U.S. However, during his visit he discovers he conceived a son last time he was in the country and must face his own future as a father and husband.

My Father Belize works because the gossipy reveals are backed up by just enough well timed humor to keep it tongue in cheek. Every time the film introduces a cheesy twist, Sean’s cousin is on hand to say exactly what is on the audience’s mind, thereby acknowledging the exaggerated turns of the script. This balancing act cleverly draws the audience into the script, opening up a space for My Father Belize to talk to us about the ordinary topic it really wants to: fatherhood.

A Handful of dates (Sudan)

It’s also great to see more films coming out of Sudan. A Handful of Dates is shot from the perspective of a young boy that is ashamed to learn the truth behind his grandfather’s date palm fortune. He has grown up idolizing his grandfather, but when he sees the poverty his grandfather has nonchalantly plunged his neighbor into to achieve his wealth, he’s repulsed.

A Handful of Dates is a risk-free adaptation of a short story by Tayeb Saleh that fits perfectly into 15 minutes. It efficiently builds the arcs of the two characters the young boy interacts with (his grandfather and the neighbor) with just enough visual cues to support the limited dialogue. No second is wasted in depicting the grandfather’s transformation from idol to demon and the neighbors transformation from social pariah into a humble exploited man we can sympathize with.

Dolly (U.K.)

In Dolly, a white babysitter works on her laptop whilst the young black girl in her care asks for help with her maths homework. The babysitter ignores her until she finds out she’s got the job she wanted. To celebrate, she lets the young black girl put make up on her face, not knowing that the young girl is going to paint her face black.

There are a lot of issues that Dolly touches on but doesn’t explore, such as white privilege, racial privilege, black girls in STEM, discrimination in education, blackness, lack of black representation, being black in a white world and more. However, instead of exploring any of these issues that the film half references, it chooses to ultimately go for a punch-line ending of a white girl being found with blackface on. As a result, Dolly is left without much substance to add to a pretty bland performance from the white babysitter.

Songs for my right side (U.S.A.)

Rodger Smith is in pain. Every night he writhes alone in his bed because of a searing pain that has taken over the right side of his body. It might be the after effects of a bad break up, or the fate of two young black people recently murdered in cold blood. The only thing that soothes the pain is music.

Songs For My Right Side deserves a lot of credit for trying to do something different. Whilst the three short films above stick to familiar storytelling styles, Songs for My Right Side blends music, mystery, and Rodger’s thoughts together to create an almost psychedelic viewing experience. It’s as if you’ve been plunged into another person’s mind and forced to follow their roving stream-of-consciousness. There’s no room to step away from it and get a complete picture of what is happening, but that is kind of the point. You’re stuck with an untrustworthy, apparently crazy narrator, and you have to try and decipher what is true or not. Whilst the film does meander a lot, rendering it pretty confusing to follow, the experience is worth the ride.

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.

Tenere – Pan African Film Festival 2020

Tenere documents the incredible real life Mad Max journey of Nigerien people crossing the Sahara on customized trucks in search of an escape from their poverty. It’s an almost unbelievable journey, and although more people try to cross the desert than the Atlantic to get to Europe, it surprisingly rarely makes the news.

Tenere itself is an observational documentary that follows Bachir on his journey from Agadez to Dirkou in search of work. Bachir is one of the most experienced members of the group, having already made the journey across the Sahara a few times in order to provide for his family. This time, instead of going to Libya, which is no longer a land of opportunity because of the raging civil war, Bachir plans to stop and find work in Dirkou, 584km away from Agadez in the northeastern corner of Niger. However, what might be a days journey by car on normal roads is a perilous 5 day trek across the sands of the Sahara in blistering 45 degree heat (that’s over 110 degrees Fahrenheit). In this part of the world, roads don’t exist, just a lot of sand.

Tenere takes off cinematically when the journey leaves Agadez. There’s a point, roughly 10-15 minutes into their journey that the craziness of it hit me. Agadez is the 5th largest city in Niger, albeit a small one when compared to cities around the world with just over 100,000 inhabitants. It doesn’t look like a city teeming with opportunity when we see it on camera. The dust roads, mud houses, and lack of greenery indicate that human life here isn’t sustainable. However, compared to the desert the migrants travel through, Agadez is an oasis of life. After 10-15 minutes of traveling through the desert, the director starts using drone shots to shoot the truck loaded with goats, people, wares, and water, allowing us to see just how perilous the journey is. We can see that their truck is the only sign of life for miles, an island in a landscape that is purely sand and hot air. They’re truck is the desert equivalent of the Senegalese pirogues aimed towards Europe, completely isolated and just a few punctures away from certain death.

You might be wondering: “well, these people were never going to die because the filmmaker and his crew were there just in case something went wrong”. However, you might not know that this film was all shot by one Turkish man, Hasan Söylemez, with just a few cameras and a convoy of hired soldiers to protect them from desert bandits. There’s not much a camera and soldiers can do to help if your car breaks down when you’re two days drive from civilization and surrounded by sand and a 45 degree heat. It’s exactly at the halfway point of their journey that one man emerges inexplicably from the desert. He has just walked 17km to find help because his truck has broken down whilst carrying 20-25 migrants on its back. They’re all stuck by the car with their water supplies running out. If he didn’t find anyone willing to help, this truck load of people would succumb to the desert, like the many other people buried under car tire tombstones. It’s an unforgiving journey, and death always feels precariously close because of a lack of visible support. There are no signs of backup help, because there isn’t any.

Tenere is almost unbelievable. These guys and their custom stacked truck would fit perfectly into an apocalyptic Mad Max film. But the handheld camera and drone shots make it almost feel like we’re there with them, minus the heat and glaring sun. It’s a brilliant observational documentary that exposes another migration route that rarely makes the news. I watched this film whilst I was halfway through reading ‘The Devil’s Highway’, an account of the Yuma 14 who died crossing the Arizona desert, which made this film even more pertinent. If you’re sitting comfortably in your home in Europe or the U.S. thinking that you deserved the luck to be born there, watch this film and see exactly how people are risking their lives to try and reverse their own fortunes.

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