Notizie

Abidjan, Ivory Coast – At the International Salon for Audiovisual Content (Sica), a panel on co-production models became more than just a roundtable: it became a launchpad. The event culminated in the signing of a landmark co-production treaty between Ivory Coast and the French-speaking Walloon Region of Belgium, described by stakeholders as a long-awaited step in building stronger bridges between African cinema and global markets.

“This signature is far more than a diplomatic act,” declared Françoise Remarck, Ivory Coast’s Minister of Culture and La Francophonie. “It’s a major step in structuring the Ivorian film industry and developing solid partnerships with the great cultural nations of the world.”

The treaty, initiated during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, sees French-speaking Belgium join Morocco, Senegal, and France as key Ivorian co-production partners. The agreement has already led to financing for four projects and opens up the Ivory Coast to Belgium’s tax shelter system,...

Alex Berger, producer of “The Bureau” and “La Maison,” Larry Kasanoff, behind the “Mortal Kombat” franchise, and Shuzo John Shiota, producer of “Transformers: Prime” will join a swathe of African and European voices set to debate the future of Africa’s film and TV at this week’s third Sica market at Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Packing the conference are government decision makers, regulators, top network execs, fund heads, bank executives and talent from Ivory Coast, West Africa and the continent at large. African talent includes Burkino Faso writer-director Dani Kouyaté, a first prize winner at this year’s Fespaco fest for “Katanga, la danse des scorpions,” Nollywood actor-director Zack Orji (“Légitime Defence”) and Landry Agbadou, director of “Gla,” Ivory Coast’s first genre film and winner of 2024’s Nisa d’Or.

Running June 26-28, the conference catches Africa and a contradictory time. “Overall, Africa’s entertainment market is growing...

A film that will very likely be included on my list of African diaspora films that may debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year, is Soleils (which translates as Suns in English) co-directed by Burkinabe filmmakers, Olivier Delahaye and Dani Kouyaté, from a script by Delahaye. With a cast that includes Binda Ngazolo and Nina Melo, the film tells the story of an old wise man who is entrusted with curing a young girl struck by amnesia. He takes her on a healing trip to Ouagadougou by way of the Cape, Berlin, Mali and Belgium. In their travels, which are full of surprises, they meet a variety of characters described as remarkable...

Everything from street hustlers and school teachers to Nobel prize winners and Islamist extremists in a feast of African film

We have selected eight films from five African countries to look out for in 2013 – the year of the 23rd edition of Fespaco – the bi-annual pan-African film and television festival of Ouagadougou.

Burn it up Djassa by Lonesome Solo (Cote d'Ivoire)

Labelled "a film by the people for the people", Burn it up Djassa is about a young street hustler in Abidjan looking for a break. After shooting his first feature, Lonesome Solo escaped the war torn Cote d'Ivoire and has not been seen since.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Biyi Bandele (Nigeria/UK)

The adaptation of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi-Adiche's Orange Prize-winning and bestselling epic, stars Thandie Newton and Chewitel Ejiofor. Nigerian investors contributed with 80% of the budget to fellow Nigerian director and writer Bandele's feature debut.

Jeppe on a Friday by Shannon Walsh,...

To celebrate Africa Express rolling out across the UK, here's a guide to 10 classic films to have come from the continent

Africa played no part in the invention of cinema. For decades, in Tarzan movies, it was the subject of fake Hollywood fantasies. And yet, when Africans made films about themselves, the results were astonishing. There are scores of great African movies. Here are 10 of the best:

Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)

If Alfred Hitchcock had been Egyptian and bisexual, and had himself played Norman Bates, Psycho might have been something like this. Sweaty, musical, melodramatic and political, Cairo Station stars ballsy writer-director Youssef Chahine as a homicidal newspaper seller in Cairo's vast railway station. In the 1950s, movies such as Rebel without a Cause and All That Heaven Allows were about repression as a ticking time bomb, but Chahine's film about sexual desire with no outlet was one of the biggest cinematic bombs of the decade.

Malian actor renowned for his long association with the director Peter Brook and his work in film

The Malian actor Sotigui Kouyaté, who has died aged 73, was an important bridge between African and western culture for 40 years. He was best known for his collaborations with the director Peter Brook, in whose work he demonstrated an extraordinary range.

Kouyaté was one of the very few performers around whom Brook shaped particular projects at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. Kouyaté played a resonant Prospero in a French-language Tempest (1990), bringing to the role the sensibility of a culture for whom the supernatural is a practical, everyday matter rather than distant folklore. In the Oliver Sacks-inspired play The Man Who (1993), he effectively effaced his origins, playing various patients (and the Jewish Sacks) with transparency and universality. In Qui Est Là? (1996), an improvisation based on Hamlet, he played Polonius, a gravedigger and a terrifying,...