Portal:African cinema

Lydia Forson (born 24 October 1984) is a Ghanaian actress, writer, and producer.

Forson's acting career started with a cameo role in Hotel St. James (2005), followed by Run Baby Run (2006), and Different Shades of Blue (2007). In 2007 she received her first Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) nomination as the Best Upcoming Female Actress for her starring role in Scorned directed by Shirley Frimpong-Manso as an abused wife who seeks revenge.

In 2009, Forson starred in the award-winning The Perfect Picture helmed by Frimpong-Manso, and for which she jointly won the Best Actress Award at the 2010 AMVA Awards with co-star Jackie Appiah. Subsequent films include A Sting in a Tale (2009), yet another collaboration with Frimpong-Manso, Masquerades (2011) a comedy she co-wrote, Phone Swap (2012), Keteke (2017), and the comedy Sidechic Gang (2017). In 2018 she won the Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Nigerian drama, Isoken.

Forson can next be seen on the big screen with the November 1 release of the psychological thriller Pawn, directed by Ivorian filmmaker Pascal Aka, starring alongside Adjetey Ananag as a celebrated detective on the hunt for a killer.

The South African Film and Television Awards (often referred as the SAFTAs or Golden Horns) is an annual South African awards ceremony hosted by the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), to honor creative excellence in the local film and television industry as assessed by the volunteer judges. The various category winners are awarded a statuette, officially called the Golden Horn, and a certificate. Only South African citizens are eligible for the awards, first presented in 2006. Among the biggest winners of the 2023 Awards were the Netflix drama Silverton Siege, which was the most-awarded film taking home six awards, the Netflix comedy series, How to Ruin Christmas with five awards, and Gaia, a horror film, that won four out of its nine nominations.

The 81st Venice International Film Festival (August 28 – September 7) has several African films in selection:

• Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo a comedy drama by Khaled Mansour and the first Egyptian film selected to be on the festival’s lineup since 2012.
• Aicha by Tunisian Mehdi M. Barsaoui, of the award-winning A Son, and inspired by the real life story of a young woman who faked her death following a bus crash
• Carissa, a South African drama co-directed and co-written by Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, and starring Gretchen Ramsden.

The 49th Toronto International Film Festival taking place September 5-12th features a number of African films in the line up:

• Front Row, by Algerian director Merzak Allouache, is a family dramedy about feuding matriarchs starring Fatiha Ouared, Nabil Asli and Bouchra Roy.
• Freedom Way by director Afolabi Olalekan about six Nigerians whose lives are disrupted by corrupt officers. Starring Debo Adebayo, Jable Ogranya, Jesse Suntele, Mike Afolarin, Femi Jacobs, and Bimbo Akintola.
• Don’t Let the Dog’s Go Tonight, the South African feature debut by Embeth Davidtz based on the best-selling eponymous novel by British-Zimbabwean author Alexandra Fuller.
• Perfumed with Mint by Egyptian cinematographer-turned-director Muhammed Hamdy (of the critically-acclaimed 2013 documentary The Square) in his feature debut.
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl a Zambian co-production directed by Rungano Nyoni and her second feature following the award-winning I am Not a Witch.
• The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos, the feature debut of the Nigerian filmmaking group the Agbajowo Collective, is based on real-life events that took place in 2016 and 2017 surrounding forced evictions from Lagos’ Otodo Gbame fishing community in 2016-2017. The film’s cast includes Temi-Ami Williams (of This is My Desire) and Nollywood veteran actor Debo Adebayo.

I Am Not a Witch is a 2017 drama film written and directed by Welsh-Zambian director Rungano Nyoni in her feature debut film. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and won the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Nyoni and producer Emily Morgan at the 71st British Academy Film Awards and was selected as the British entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards,

The story centers around Shula (Maggie Mulubwa), an 8-year-old girl who is deemed a witch and sent to a witch camp. Writer-director Nyoni was inspired by actual stories of witchcraft accusations in Zambia. In her research for the film, she traveled to Ghana and spent time in one of the world's oldest witch camps, observing their daily life and rituals.  "I actually stayed in a [witch camp]. They said I was the first foreigner to do that, which is quite amazing. I read loads of research on witch camps. I stayed there to see what it was like to just live there."

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 7.50/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 19 critics. The Guardian's film critic called I am not a Witch "comic, tragic – and captivatingly beautiful."

No Simple Way Home (2022) by South Sudanese filmmaker Akuol de Mabior in her debut feature, is the first ever South Sudanese film production to screen at the Berlin Film Festival.  The documentary is a tribute to the director's father, John Garang de Mabior, considered the founding father of South Sudan, and recounts her and her mother's return to the country after years in exile.

The screening permit of the award-winning Zanka Contact (2020), was suspended by the government-backed Moroccan Cinematographic Centre (CCM), which helped fund the film, due to the inclusion of a song by the Sahrawi singer Mariem Hassan.  Hassan supported the Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state in the Western Sahara, considered an integral part of Moroccan territory by the government. Directed by French-Moroccan filmmaker Ismael El Iraki, the film was inspired by his journey as a survivor of the 2015 Paris Bataclan attacks and follows the love story of an aging rock star and a singer.

The Blue Elephant 2, a 2019 Egyptian drama horror mystery crime thriller film directed by Marwan Hamed became the highest-grossing Egyptian film in the history of Egyptian cinema.^.. Starring Karim Abdel Aziz, Khaled El Sawy, Nelly Karim and Sherine Reda in the lead roles, the film is a sequel to the 2014 box office hit The Blue Elephant.

Moroccan film director Nabil Ayouche is a co-founder of Aflamin, the first Moroccan VOD platform dedicated to Moroccan cinema and international independent films. Among its aims is to make Moroccan film more legally accessible to Moroccans while diminishing piracy.

All the characters and sets in the Zambian animationThe Legend of the Sky Kingdom (2003) were constructed from junk found by the filmmakers in a lot next to their offices. It was a stylistic choice necessitated by budget considerations as well as inspired by the wire and metalwork of Africa's folk artists, who often transform discarded items into works of art. It was the country's first full-length animated film.

Ama Qamata (b. September 2, 1998) is a South African actress. She is best known for her roles as Buhle Ndaba in the Mzansi Magic series Gomora and Puleng Khumalo in the hit Netflix series Blood & Water.

Fanta Regina Nacro (born 4 September 1962) is known for being the first woman from Burkina Faso to direct a feature film and is a founding member of the Guilde Africaine des Realisateurs et Producteurs (The African Guild of Directors and Producers). Nacro's films frequently address the tension between tradition and modernity in Burkina Faso and with stories told around social issues such as AIDS and education for girls.   Her short film Bintou won numerous festival awards in 2001 and 2002 including at the Cannes Film Festival and FESPACO.

Sarah Hassan (born 5 September 1988) is a Kenyan actress, producer, director. She is known for her roles in television series such as Crime and Justice, Tahidi High, and Zora and films that include the Nigerian-Kenyan romantic comedy Plan B and Family Vacation, a Netflix drama that dropped on August 8th. Her awards include Best Actress at the Kalasha Awards in 2019 for the Plan B, and again in 2021 for Crime and Justice.

Fred Kudjo Kuwornu (born 6 September 1971), is an Italian-Ghanaian filmmaker, producer, rights activist, film curator, and educator. His documentaries deal with political and social themes, such as racism, interracial relations, diversity, Afro-Italians and Black diasporic identity in Italy and the African diaspora in the world. These include ''Blaxploitalian 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema'', Inside Buffalo and 18 IUS SOLI. We Were Here:The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe is currently on exhibit at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia at the Central Pavilion.

Mohamed Attia (born September 19, 1973) is an Egyptian production designer and art director who is best known for his collaborations with directors Marwan Hamed, Yousry Nasrallah, Mohamed Khan, and Tarek Alarian. He is also one of the key artistic directors behind the Pharaohs' Golden Parade and the parade that celebrated the restoration of Luxor's Avenue of Sphinxes. He received the Egyptian National Film Festival's Best Art Design Award for his work in The Blue Elephant (2014); the Egyptian Catholic Center for Cinema's Best Art Director Award for The Originals (2017); and the Cairo Design Award's Golden Award in the Production Design Category for Diamond Dust (2018) and Blue Elephant: Dark Whispers, and the Silver Award for Sons of Rizk 2 (2024).

"I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type."

Haile Gerima, Ethiopian director

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Flight 404 is a 2024 Egyptian thriller directed by Hani Khalifa starring Mona Zaki, with a script by Mohamed Ragaa, and produced by Mohamed Hefzy. The film follows Ghada (Zaki) a woman whose tainted past resurfaces as she is about to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca. A hit in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the film broke Egyptian box office records for a female-led film.

The soundtrack includes 15 original songs by Jordanian-Canadian film composer Suad Bushnaq and was nominated for the Best Soundtrack Septimius Award in 2024. In addition, a new arrangement of 'Ya Rayehin Lil-Nabi', the famous 1953 song from iconic Egyptian singer Layla Murad appears in the closing credits. The song sparked such interest among cinemagoers that the producers of the film released some background notes after the film's release.

'Ya Rayehin Lil-Nabi' is based on one of the most famous Sufi poems by Rabia Basri, an Arab Muslim saint and one of the earliest Sufi mystics. The idea of using the song, originally composed by Riad Al Sunbati and Abo El Seoud El Ebiary for Murad, was conceived by the film's director and writer and to align with the film's key plot events. Music producer Kareem Gaber, also known as “Al Waili” was brought on board to create a fresh and original arrangement while preserving the presence of Murad's voice and integrating the vocals of Nada Abbas.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a 2024 South African drama film directed by South-African-American actress Embeth Davidtz in her feature directorial debut. The film is based on British-Zimbabwean Alexandra Fuller's best-selling 2001 memoir of her experience as a young girl  in a white tenant farming family in the last days of Rhodesia’s minority White-led government in the lead up to the pivotal 1980 elections. The mostly South African cast includes Lexi Venter as the 8-year-old Fuller, Davidtz as her alcoholic mother, in addition to Zikhona Bali, ​​Rob Van Vuuren, and Fumani Shilubana.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2024, and is set to screen as part of the Gala Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2024. The Hollywood Reporter’s review called it an “extraordinary” and “beautifully realized” adaptation.