Special strands in this year’s Film Africa include “Beyond Nollywood”, showcasing new-wave content from the country.
The 10th edition gives Londoners the chance to sample 48 titles from 16 African countries Babetida Sadjo is the star of new film ‘Our Father, The Devil’ Film Africa festival celebrates a continent’s stories in all their variety on x (opens in a new window) Film Africa festival celebrates a continent’s stories in all their variety on facebook (opens in a new window) Film Africa festival celebrates a continent’s stories in all their variety.
A twenty-something Guinean woman works as head chef in the kitchen of a residential home in Luchon, a small French village close to the Andorran border. She walks into work one day and is confronted by a voice and a face that bring her past violently into the present. Marie (Babetida Sadjo) is the protagonist of Ellie Foumbi’s new film Our Father, The Devil, the opening film at this year’s Film Africa festival in London. Organised by the Royal African Society, the festival showcases African cinematic talent and has become a gathering point for African diasporic communities in the UK.
This is the festival’s 10th edition and will give Londoners the chance to sample 48 titles from 16 African countries. Yet most people on the continent are unlikely to see these films. According to Unesco, Africa is the most underserved continent as far as cinema distribution is concerned. There are about 1,650 screens across the continent, less than one screen per 790,000 people.
In 2020, the US had a total of 44,000 screens: one per 7,500 people. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, produces about 2,500 films a year. Although Nollywood, the country’s film industry, is “the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce”, as the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed in 2009, for too long it’s been the de facto representation of “African cinema” on the world stage. Special strands in this year’s Film Africa include “Beyond Nollywood”, showcasing new-wave content from the country.
And throughout, Film Africa challenges preconceived narratives about film from the continent and the diaspora by offering a wider range of cinematic fare.
‘Our Father, The Devil’ Our Father, The Devil opens with Marie looking tense and aloof. It’s a mood that becomes more familiar as the film goes on. House parties and late-night chats about boys offer some light relief but it’s short-lived. Her friendship with a quick-witted, irreverent resident at the residential home is what seems to put her most at ease. Marie connects with Jeanne (Martine Amisse). The older woman taught the younger woman at culinary school a few years earlier. But when the demons from Marie’s past start to emerge, these rare moments of laughter disappear, gripping her with rageful, murderous intent. Foumbi directs the film into murky moral waters, challenging our tendency to typecast individuals. She also allows questions of belonging, conflict and forgiveness to hang in the air unanswered. The slow movements of the camera and close-up face shots skilfully build tension, subtle nods to some of Foumbi’s own cinematic influences. “I was introduced to the French New Wave by the time I was 11,” the Cameroonian director said in a recent interview with Akoroko, an African film platform. “I didn’t realise then that ingesting those films so young really started to shape my aesthetic, which expanded when I discovered African cinema.”
‘No Simple Way Home’ is a memoir documentary by Akuol de Mabior another female-directed production showing at Film Africa.
It’s a memoir documentary by film-maker Akuol de Mabior, in which she weaves together stories of her high-profile family with those of their country, Sudan. De Mabior’s father, John Garang de Mabior, died in a helicopter crash three weeks after being appointed first vice-president. In the 1980s and 1990s he had led the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, a guerrilla movement that fought against the national government. The family was forced into exile in Kenya, only returning after a peace accord was signed in 2005. She offers up an evenly paced narration to express the strains and frustrations of life in the public eye, all while grieving and trying to chart her own course. It’s in the context of a fragile peace — personally and nationally — that de Mabior starts to document conversations with her mother Rebecca, conversations that are intimate and unhurried, traversing philosophies for life, duty, as well as hopes and dreams. They’re reminiscent of the strong oral traditions of many African cultures, when wisdom is passed down from the older to the younger generations.
In The Last Shelter, Malian film-maker Ousmane Samassékou delves into the familiar story of migrant journeys from Africa to Europe. But in his documentary, the story isn’t told by European politicians, charities, or border agencies. It’s told by the migrants themselves. ‘The Last Shelter’ is a familiar story told from an unusual perspective The Caritas Migrant House is a fragile-looking building in Gao, Mali, about 650 km from the border with Algeria. It houses young migrants who have travelled from other parts of north-west Africa and are readying for the arduous journey across the Sahara. The centre volunteers have first-hand experience of it themselves. And for Samassékou, the story is personal too. “My grand-uncle left on an adventure and 32 years later, we still haven’t heard from him,” he says. The camera movements are slow, the shots considered. The centre exists to educate, and even dissuade, the young migrants from making the potentially perilous journey across the vast desert. But even in the midst of weighty conversations, there are attempts at normalcy: a makeshift barbershop emerges, a freestyle rap battle breaks out among some of the young men, two 16-year-old girls extend a hand of friendship to a lonely woman in her forties. The lack of narration in the documentary allows the viewer to hear directly from the different characters.
Their stories are multi-dimensional and many have different (even surprising) reasons for trying to get to Europe. All three directors — Foumbi, de Mabior, and Samassékou — have lived cross-culturally, highlighting the role that the African diaspora is playing in shaping African cinema today.
One of the triumphs of the festival is the way in which it provides a space for African people to tell the multiplicity of stories that shape our lives. Other films showing at the festival explore themes such as belonging, science fiction or post-partum depression.
More than providing a platform for upcoming African film-makers, the festival also gives £1,000 to the makers of the best narrative feature and best short film, judged by a panel of experts. Samassékou says: “Today’s generation of African film directors are restoring a sense of dignity to [film across the continent].” That simple fact is a cause for celebration.
October 28-November 6 2020
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