BERLIN —
African films are enjoying a high profile at this year’s Berlinale festival,
with debuts from South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) turning
heads along with a new take on “Nollywood”.
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While there are no
African films in the main competition at Europe’s first major film festival of
the year, several documentaries and features from the continent are running in
the event’s sidebar sections.
In the documentary
“No Simple Way Home”, director Akuol de Mabior holds a deeply personal lens to
the recent history of South Sudan and the legacy of her father, John Garang de
Mabior, a revolutionary leader who was killed in 2005.
De Mabior, who was
born and raised in exile, turns the camera on her mother and sister as they
strive to find meaning and hope in a country weighed down by years of political
and personal trauma.
The film aims to
“generate conversations about what it means in an African context to feel at
home in your own country”, De Mabior told AFP.
“Initially I
wanted to make a film about my mother, because I had this feeling that
history’s tendency to forget women’s contributions. I had this feeling that my
father would be remembered and I worried that she wouldn’t be,” she said.
Narratives on migration
But the film evolved to
become more political as her mother was
elected as one of five vice-presidents in South Sudan’s new government.
“It started making
more sense to think more widely about the impact that she might have on the
country, on whether or not this leadership that was part of this liberation
struggle are the right people to take things forward,” De Mabior said.
“No Simple Way
Home” is one of two films showing at the Berlinale made under Generation
Africa, a project to fund documentaries offering a new narrative on migration.
The other is “No
U-Turn” from Nigerian director Ike Nnaebue, known for his “Nollywood” classics
such as “A Long Night” and “Dr Mekam”.
In this new
documentary, Nnaebue retraces the route he took as a young man from Nigeria via
Benin, Mali, and Mauritania to Morocco, hoping to get to Europe.
He speaks to young
people at various stages of the journey that he himself eventually abandoned,
turning back and instead studying film making n Nigeria.
Meanwhile, in the
festival’s Encounters section, “Father’s Day” from Kivu Ruhorahoza tells three
intersecting family stories in present-day Rwanda.
The characters are
a mother trying to cope with the loss of her son, a small-time criminal
aspiring to pass on wisdom to his son, and a young woman taking care of the
ailing father she never truly loved.
‘Tell our story’
In the short film section, Somali director Mo Harawe’s “Will My Parents
Come to See Me” charts the final day of a prisoner facing the death penalty.
And in the
documentary “We, Students!”, young director Rafiki Fariala offers an insight
into the chaotic lives of a group of economics students at the CAR’s Bangui University.
Fariala turns
three of his friends — Nestor, Aaron, and Benjamin – into stars as he documents
their chaotic romantic lives, academic struggles and run-ins with the law.
The film “is not
there to change the world, to change things, but it is to tell our story, to
show who we are,” Fariala told AFP.
“Maybe through the
film, people will discover our history as young people in a different way,”
said Fariala, who was born in Congo but grew up in the CAR after his parents
fled there during the Congo War.
Many people associate
African countries with war and corruption, but “we also have another history”,
he said. “We also have talent. We have another way of seeing things.”
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