Fort Saganne

In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Les Aventuriers

Two adventurers and best friends, Roland and Manu, are the victims of a practical joke that costs Manu his pilot's license. With seeming contrition, the jokesters tell Roland and Manu about a crashed plane lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Congo stuffed with riches. The adventurers set off to find the loot.

The Illustrated Man

A man who has a body almost completely covered in tattoos is searching for the woman who cursed him with the "skin illustrations". Each tattoo reveals a bizarre story, which is experienced by staring at the scene depicted. When the illustrated man meets a fellow tramp on the road a strange voyage begins.

تاجوج

Beginning of the 20th century in the east of Sudan. Tajouj is the beautiful cousin of a young tribesman who falls in love with her and proclaims his love out loud in a song. However, the traditions of his tribe forbid such love, and his uncle refuses his request to marry Tajouj. But after the young man leaves the village and declares his remorse, the marriage is finally allowed after all. In the meantime, however, another man has expressed interest in Tajouj. A story full of jealousy ensues, which ends in tragedy.

The Power of One

PK, an English orphan terrorized for his family's political beliefs in Africa, turns to his only friend, a kindly world-wise prisoner, Geel Piet. Geel teaches him how to box with the motto “fight with your fists and lead with your heart”. As he grows to manhood, PK uses these words to take on the system and the injustices he sees around him - and finds that one person really can make a difference.

Divine Carcasse

This film follows the fortunes of an old Peugeot off loaded in Cotonou, Benin. As it changes hands we get a glimpse into the lives of its successive owners.

Piedone l'africano

Inspector Rizzo in Napoli gets a message from a policeman from South Africa who wants to meet him. Immediately before this meeting the South African policeman is killed. Dying he shows Rizzo a picture of his young son Bodo. Rizzo travels to Johannesburg to find out what the policeman was working on and to find Bodo.

La Montagne de Baya

Set in the 1800s among the Berbers of North Africa, this 1997 Algerian feature concerns a noble widow who receives a customary purse of gold coins from the enemy tribe that murdered her husband; the gift puts her in conflict with her kinsmen, who want the money to buy back land taken by the enemy in cahoots with French colonials.

L'Absence

La Colline Oubliée

At the outbreak of the Second World War, two friends, Mokrane and Menach, abruptly interrupt their studies and return to their remote native Kabylian village of Tagsa. While waiting to be drafted into the French Army they have time to woo. Mokrane falls for beautiful Aazi and soon marries her only to find out that she can bear no child. Menach, on his part, is stongly attracted to Davda, but the latter is already married to a rich merchant...Happiness does not seem to be in store for the two former students...

Machaho

In Kabylie, rude mountain region in the north of Algeria. Arezki finds the young Larbi exhausted, buried under the snow. He takes him in and nurses him until he's recovered. The host seduces Arezki's daughter. She is pregnant. This is an unsupportable shame to the father of the female sinner. Arezki claims vengeance. He leaves his house and takes the oath not to come back before having killed Larbi who betrayed him under his own roof.

Le silence de la forêt

A film about the difficulty for even the most well-intentioned person to know and respect another culture. In this case, the problem is so acute that there is even heated debate over what to call that 'other.' The subtitles in the film use the familiar word 'pygmies,' a relatively pejorative European term; the Bantu or villagers' expression for the same group, Babingas, carries similar negative connotations. These highly specialized, tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers should perhaps be called by their own ethnonym, Aka, MoAka (sing.) and BaAka (pl.)

Sous le signe du vaudou

A young man having omitted to make the ritual offerings of voodoo, suffers the wrath of the spirits.

Yelbeedo

On their wedding night, a couple rescue a baby from a garbage bin only to adopt it some years later.

The Sheltering Sky

An American couple drift toward emptiness in postwar North Africa.

L'Aube des Damnés

This excellent feature-length documentary - the story of the imperialist colonization of Africa - is a film about death. Its most shocking sequences derive from the captured French film archives in Algeria containing - unbelievably - masses of French-shot documentary footage of their tortures, massacres and executions of Algerians. The real death of children, passers-by, resistance fighters, one after the other, becomes unbearable. Rather than be blatant propaganda, the film convinces entirely by its visual evidence, constituting an object lesson for revolutionary cinema.

Juju Stories

Juju Stories tackles juju in contemporary Lagos through three stories. In Love Potion, by Omonua, an unmarried woman agrees to use juju to find herself an ideal mate. In Yam, by Makama, consequences arise when a street urchin picks up seemingly random money from the roadside. In Suffer the Witch, by Obasi, love and friendship turns into obsession, when a young college woman attracts her crush's interest.

Mama Tumaini

A black and a white woman meets in Dar es Salam because of their men, and starts a friendship, despite their different background.

The Hill

North Africa, World War II. British soldiers on the brink of collapse push beyond endurance to struggle up a brutal incline. It's not a military objective. It's The Hill, a manmade instrument of torture, a tower of sand seared by a white-hot sun. And the troops' tormentors are not the enemy, but their own comrades-at-arms.