My Friend

Colombine

August 2019 •French

In West Africa, Colombine runs a dispensary in risky bushland. A strong-willed, whiskey-drinking religious woman armed with her rifle, she takes care of sick and orphaned children in the region. She sees Mélia arrive, a somewhat imprisoned Parisian MSF doctor, herself an African orphan, but who has never returned to her homeland since childhood. She discovers bush medicine, its difficulties and the dilemmas that caregivers must face in the face of chronic shortages of equipment and medicines. These two courageous but opposite women form an unlikely team. They will have to learn to overcome their barriers and confess their secrets to protect the dispensary and the children from the dangers of the region and a threat that surpasses them.

Sands of the Kalahari

November 1965 •English

A diverse group of individuals struggle to survive in the Kalahari desert after their passenger plane crashes.

Mamba

March 1930 •English

August Bolte, the richest man in a settlement in German East Africa in the period before World War I, is called "Mamba" by the locals, which is the name of a deadly snake. Despised by the locals and the European settlers alike for his greed and arrogance, Bolte forces the beautiful daughter of a destitute nobleman to marry him in exchange for saving her father from ruin. Upon her arrival in Africa, she falls in love with an officer in the local German garrison. When World War I breaks out, Bolte, unable to avoid being conscripted, foments a rebellion among the local natives.

Yeelen

July 1987 •Bambara

A young man with magical powers journeys to his uncle to request help in fighting his sorcerer father.

The Lion

December 2003 •French

In Africa in the fifties, during the Mau-Mau war, young Patricia's friendship with a lion she raised for years.

Unpredictable Nature of the River

January 1996 •French

Nobleman Jean-Francois de la Plaine is exiled to serve as governor of a West African colony.

Echebka (الشبكة)

January 1976 •Arabic

Maamar (Sid Ali Kouiret), a young fisherman working in a small port in western Algeria, is forced to sell his goods at a discount every day to Si Khelifa (Abdelhalim Rais), owner of many trucks and a cannery where the wives work fishermen. He has a strange encounter. As he returns from fishing, bassinet in hand, he witnesses a car accident. Indeed, a car hits a tree with a beautiful girl “Hayat” on board who has lost consciousness. Maamar pulls her out of the car and saves her. It is at this precise moment that he realizes the existence of another world. As if awakened from a long sleep, he realizes that this exploitation can no longer continue. He leaves his village and his wife Laâlia (Fatima Belhadj) on a whim for three years. He finds himself in the capital which he leaves to return to his village and carry out a saving action...

Five Weeks in a Balloon

August 1962 •English

Professor Fergusson plans to make aviation history by making his way across Africa by balloon. He plans to claim uncharted territories in West Africa as proof of his inventions worth.

King Solomon's Mines

June 1937 •English

White hunter Allan Quartermain and his enigmatic guide help a young Irish woman locate her missing father in unexplored Darkest Africa.

Les Moineaux d'Algérie

January 1979 •Arabic

El Fidayoune

January 1971 •Arabic

Mighty Joe Young

July 1949 •English

A young woman, Jill Young, grew up on her father's ranch in Africa, raising a large gorilla named Joe from an infant. Years later, she brings him to Hollywood to become a star.

Names Live Nowhere

September 1994 •French

A Senegalese storyteller travels to Belgium and observes the lives of African expatriates in Europe. Dreams and struggles great and small are explored.

Moolaadé

August 2004 •Bambara

When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.

Chocolat

May 1988 •French

On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.

Tribe

May 2016 •English

Set for 20 centuries BC., in the land of Far West , in eastern Sahara Africa; there lived King Bunzo of the great Tribe Nation, seeming little in size but mighty in times of war. The Empire of Tribe has authority over every other empire. King Bunzo chooses to sell his male subjects to slave traders who worked for the bloody tasty King of Northern Kingdom known as Emperor Tobitotaya. Emperor Tobitotaya is a dreadful Leader that wants Kings of other Nations to bow before him. Any King who refuses to do so, he would give a handshake of War. From greed, to betrayal, to bravery, to love, Tribe is a film that has a good dosage of such emotions in a manner that will have cinema lovers glued to their seats.

The Silence of the Forest

January 2003 •French

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.)

In a Better World

August 2010 •Danish

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

Black and White in Color

September 1976 •French

French colonists in Africa, several months behind in the news, find themselves at war with their German neighbors. Deciding that they must do their proper duty and fight the Germans, they promptly conscript the local native population. Issuing them boots and rifles, the French attempt to make "proper" soldiers out of the Africans. A young, idealistic French geographer seems to be the only rational person in the town, and he takes over control of the "war" after several bungles on the part of the others.

White Material

March 2010 •French

On the brink of civil war breaking out in an African country, a French woman struggles to save her floundering coffee plantation.