Rebecca Barry : 2013

An inspirational feature-length documentary that paints a clear picture of the reality of what it means to be a girl in the 21st century. Feminism may have promised equality and sought a better and fairer world for women but the reality is that girls make up almost a quarter of the world's population yet still face the greatest discrimination of any group in the world. Being born a girl means you are more likely to be subjected to violence, disease, poverty and disadvantage than any other group on Earth. We meet 14-year-old Kimsey from Cambodia, forced to sell her virginity at the age of 12; Aziza from Afghanistan, who will be shot if she goes to school; Breani, a teen living in a ghetto of New York City and dreaming of stardom; Katie from Australia, who is recovering from a suicide attempt; Habiba from Cameroon, betrothed to a man twenty years her senior; and Manu from Papua New Guinea, about to become a mother at 14, following her first sexual encounter. Presented not as victims of society, but members of an unfair one, each is on the brink of womanhood and dealing with the realities of what it means to grow up female in their world today. As they come of age in the way their culture dictates, we see remarkable heart-warming stories of resilience, hope, courage and a refusal to be second best. Rebecca Barry's film was presented at Oslo's Films from the South Festival 2014, in celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child.

Boris Lojkine : 2014

Dreaming of a better future, Léonard leaves Cameroon for Europe. His journey will end badly however. Abandoned by his travel companions in the middle of the Sahara, he finds himself blocked in a border village, without any resources. His path will cross with Hope's, a young Nigerian woman who is also stuck and has found herself forced into prostitution. She needs a protector and is looking for a way out of the desert. In a fiercely hostile world where safety requires staying with one's own people, Léonard and Hope try to find their way together, and to love each other. Boris Lojkine's feature debut was awarded Le Prix SACD when it premiered at Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes 2014.

Shaun Kadlec & Deb Tullmann : 2013

Like everywhere else in the world, gays and lesbians in Cameroon seek refuge in the city. The two young gay men in this film are crazy about Rihanna and Lady Gaga, who has been a gay icon since her hit song 'Born this way'. But the tolerance Lady Gaga sings about is just a dream for them. In their country, homosexual relations are subject to punishment of up to five years in prison, and it is almost impossible to come out to your own family. This film describes both the impossible and the possible. The filmmakers' unobtrusive proximity to their protagonists has yielded conversations in which their interlocutors discuss their longing for a love life they are forbidden to have. Alice Nkom is a lawyer and human rights activist fighting to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. Thanks to her, there is quiet hope and small niches can be discerned where there is something akin to a life not based upon self-denial. The film premiered in the Panorama Dokumente section at Berlin International Film Festival 2013.

A film by Claire Denis

In a remote town in Cameroon lives a sole white family during the last days of France's African colonies. Marc Dalens, the often-travelling regional administrator; his wife Aimée, who does her best to stave off frustration and boredom with household activities; and their young daughter France, who cultivates a special and loving friendship with the native servant boy Protée. But as France and her mother attempt to move past the established boundaries between themselves and the native Africans, the family's ordered world is threatened with chaos when a plane full of strangers makes a forced landing nearby, its arrival unleashing a torrent of simmering resentments, racism and repressed passions.

The disastrous effects of French colonialism are examined through the paradigm of a young girl's coming of age in French West Africa. As France, a woman travelling alone in Cameroon, slips into a dreamy and distant flashback to her childhood days, scenes of a transient existence come into focus. France's father, a district governor, and her fragile mother are living a relatively peaceful if somewhat strained existence when a small plane carrying a gaggle of French imperialists and their entourage makes an emergency landing near their house. An ex-seminary drifter, a white plantation owner and his African concubine, and a newly-wed couple are forced to stay with the family, causing tensions and troubles that were bubbling barely below the surface to silently erupt. Sexual tensions, as well as social and class struggles, explode, with expansive vistas of Cameroon as an astonishing yet innocent backdrop. The heat, the landscape, and the underlying and eroticised tension converge as the noble and austere houseboy, Protée, becomes the focus of France's memories and regrets.

Claire Denis's beautifully photographed first feature from 1988, a loosely autobiographical story adapted from her childhood memories, observes closely yet non-judgmentally through gestures and glances, the intricate nature of relationships in a decaying colonial society.