Top 3 movies shining a spotlight on African cinema

TimesLIVE

20-05-2025

May 25 is Africa Day, the annual commemoration of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, so what better time to turn attention away from the anxieties and despair of the present and take a trip back into the glorious past of Africa's rich cinematic history?
Here are three films from across the continent that explore the rich tapestry of history, struggle and tradition that has shaped life in Africa for millennia.
THE ART HOUSE ESSENTIAL:
Chronicle of the Years of Embers — YouTube
Algerian director Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's 1975 drama about the history of his homeland from World War 2 to the war of independence earns its oft-used epic descriptor readily.
A widescreen spectacle that won the prestigious Palm d'Or prize at Cannes, the film tells the big story of Algeria's long and bitter struggle for freedom from the colonial yoke of France. It does this through the smaller story of Ahmad, a poor farmer forced into service in the French army during the war, who returns with the fire for liberation burning in his belly as he commits to freeing himself and his country from colonialism.
Spread over six chapters from 1930 to 1954, the film offers a history of the phases in the country's journey to revolution through the personal experiences and challenges of its peasant protagonist.
It is regarded as an epic classic to match the celebrated Hollywood examples offered by films such as Lawrence of Arabia, and is notable for its depiction of how the harshness of the desert environment echoes the difficulties faced by Ahmed and his fellow countrymen as they battle for independence. It's a rare example of a film that manages to marry the changes in political consciousness of a nation to those faced by its very ordinary but heroic main character. It remains the only African and Arab film to have won Cannes' top prize and stands up half-a-century later as a moving, sweeping, historically engaging and politically challenging epic.
THE STONE COLD CLASSIC:
Mandabi — YouTube
No African cinema list is complete without mention of Ousmane Sembène, the prodigious and multitalented director and writer who did more than most to put the cinema of the continent firmly in the global spotlight.
This, his second feature, shot entirely in the Senegalese language Wolof, and considered to be the first feature shot entirely in an African language, was written and directed by Sembène, based on his own novel of the same name. The title refers to a money order, and it's the cashing of this precious gift that serves as the device on which Sembène hangs his simple but sharply effective dissection of the ills of neocolonialism, corruption and religion in 1968 post-independence Senegal.
Ibrahim Dieng is an unemployed Muslim man struggling to support his two wives and seven children in Dakar. When his nephew sends him a money order from France, saved while working his job as a street sweeper in Paris, Ibrahim's luck looks as if it is about to change for the better. He's supposed to keep some money for himself, keep some aside for his nephew and give some to his sister.
However, it soon becomes clear there's no such thing as an easy money order as Ibrahim finds that there are many hurdles to overcome if he's to get the precious gold. Without an ID, he must negotiate the frustrations of Senegalese bureaucracy to get one, spending money he doesn't have in the process. When neighbours arrive asking for a loan, Ibrahim's good heart loses him more money he doesn't have to give, and what little he might have had left is finally tricked out of him by an immoral relative, leaving the poor man we met at the beginning of the film even poorer.
Sembène's parable about the challenges and pitfalls facing his beloved country and its people in the uncertain postcolonial era is told with gentle love, quiet humour and emotional empathy that help to make it a small but memorable masterpiece.
THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
Yaaba — YouTube
Hailed on its release in 1989 as 'a timeless, universal tale of wise children, unwise adults and one ultrawise old woman,' Burkinabè director Idrissa Ouedraogo's drama is a classic tale of the cruelties of adult life as seen through the eyes of its child protagonists.
Bila is a 10-year-old living in Burkina Faso's smallest village when she makes friends with Saana, an elderly woman ostracised by her community and dubbed a witch. She may be a witch to the rest of the village but to Bila, Saana is 'Yaaba' (grandmother), a friend and the provider of medicine that helped Bila's cousin stay alive after becoming ill.
Using nonprofessional actors and filmed with a direct intimacy that places you firmly in the reality of its setting, Ouedraogo's film is a quiet, simple work that packs a hard, universal and truth-telling punch that lifts it beyond the world of its tiny village and into the hearts of anyone who's had to overcome superstition and led to find love in an unexpected place.