All about Africa

>> From features and docs to digital video and kids’ films, the 23rd Vues d’Afrique festival has a program as varied as the cultures it represents

by MALCOLM FRASER

The Vues d’Afrique festival, marking its 23rd edition this year, presents a selection of over 100 films, including work by and about Africans and the African diaspora. With global awareness of African issues slowly pushing its way out of the morass of stereotypes and clichés, it’s a good time to check in and find out more about the much-misunderstood continent and its many cultures.

The festival opens with the gala presentation of Africa Paradis, by Benin’s Sylvestre Amoussou. The conceptual drama is set in 2033; the United States of Africa is a prosperous nation and Europe is a disenfranchised shambles. The film follows a French couple as they illegally immigrate to Africa, where they struggle with their illegitimate status and anti-white racism. The satire is drawn in broad strokes and the production values are low, but the drama is compelling and Amoussou successfully evokes a thorough reversal of the existing order.

Other films to watch out for in the fiction category include Mon Colonel, an Algerian war drama directed by Laurent Herbiet and co-written by legendary director Costa-Gavras, King Ampaw’s No Time to Die, a Ghana-Germany co-production about the amorous misadventures of an undertaker, and Faouzi Bensaïdi’s What a Wonderful World, a Moroccan love triangle between a gangster, a prostitute and a traffic cop.

GANGSTER OF LOVE: What a Wonderful World

The documentary program is equally varied. Delta, Oil’s Dirty Business, by Greek director Yorgos Avgeropoulos, opens with a CSI-like montage of masked gunmen roaring down a river in motorboats. The action flick vibe is soon dispelled as the men are revealed to be Nigerian revolutionaries bent on destroying the oil refineries that exploit the region’s resources and destroy its environment, while the impoverished rural citizens see none of the promised benefits. You won’t be seeing this in a theatre near you if Shell Oil’s legal department has anything to say about it—the company is accused of everything from environmental degradation, of which the evidence is plentiful, to cold-blooded murder. The film suffers from some weird exposition and ill-advised stylistic choices, but as activist cinema it can’t be knocked. The image of a broken pump pouring crude oil into a river as fishermen cast their nets nearby (an image which Avgeropoulos deploys none too subtly whenever a Shell apologist spins his spiel) is a chillingly direct illustration of the situation.

Other environmental docs include the festival prize-winner Arlit, deuxième Paris, about a city in Niger that went from boom town to ghost town with the vagaries of the uranium market, and Z’aime, which details how a lack of public transit in the Benin city of Cotonou has led to the phenomenon of 100,000 moto-taxis overwhelming the city, providing a much-needed service but ravaging the environment.

Several of the docs deal with the difficulties faced by African journalists on the frontlines of the continent’s many conflicts. Local filmmakers Pierre Mignault and Hélène Magny’s Ondes de choc tells the tale of Radio Okapi, a station in the Democratic Republic of Congo whose journalists routinely take their lives in their own hands just to do their jobs. In Kigali, des images contre un massacre, director Jean-Christophe Klotz, who was wounded during the 1994 massacre in Rwanda, returns to the scene 10 years later to seek out his fellow survivors.

The fest is also paying tribute to legendary African filmmaker Henri Duparc. The Guinea-born, Ivory Coast-based director, who died last year, had a career spanning five decades, many genres and assorted political engagement; six of his films will be screened in the retrospective.

CHILLINGLY DIRECT: Delta, Oil’s Dirty Business

Other programs include Regard d’ici, a showcase of Quebec-based films on African topics, Africa numérique, which focuses on projects enabled by the low-budget possibilities of digital video, and Matinées ciné-jeunesse, a collection of kids’ films. With a program as varied as the multiple cultures it represents, there’s something for anyone who’s interested either in African issues or in new cinematic voices emerging on the world stage

Vues d’Afrique runs April 19–29.
For showtimes and ticket info,
see www.vuesdafrique.org

>> Movie Listings