Africa: War, Violence, and Genocide

From Che Guevara's military campaign to avenge Lumumba in the Congo up to the fall of apartheid in South Africa, 300,000 Cubans fought alongside African revolutionaries. CUBA, AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY is the previously untold story of Cuba's support for African revolutions, one of the Cold War's most vigorous contests over resources and ideology.

A 20-year veteran of the Angolan civil war returns to the capital city of Luanda where he faces the challenges of assimilation and survival.

Chad, 2006. After a forty-year civil war, the radio announces the government has just amnestied the war criminals. Outraged by the news, Gumar Abatcha orders his grandson Atim, a sixteen-year-old youth, to trace the man who killed his father and to execute him. Atim obeys him and, armed with his father's own gun, he goes in search of Nassara, the man who made him an orphan. It does not take long before he finds him. Nassara, who now goes straight, is married, goes to the mosque and owns a small bakery. After some hesitation Atim offers him his services as an apprentice. He is hired then it will be easy for him to gun down the murderer of his father. At least, that is what he thinks...

Ezra is the first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of abducting child soldiers into the continent's recent civil wars. Ezra is structured around the week-long questioning of a 16 year old boy, Ezra, before a version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, created in Sierra Leone in 2002 in the wake of its decade long civil war. This hearing is then inter-cut with chronological flashbacks to pivotal moments during Ezra's ten years in the rebel faction which made him who he is.

The action is set in an unnamed African country, where a brutal government's death squad commanded by Colonel Koulbou (Felkissam Mahamat) is active. A journalist, Adoum (Youssouf Djaoro), having obtained his passport wants to travel abroad so to be able to report on the situation in his country; but while at the airport, a compromising letter is found on him. Adoum is thrown in one of Koulbou's jails. All hope seems lost, but Adoum finds unexpected help from Koulbou's estranged wife, Hawa.

In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.

Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader.

A hot-shot journalist is swept up in a movement to challenge Apartheid in 1950s South Africa.

La Nuit de la Vérité is situated in an imaginary West African country. After ten years of civil war between the government army of the Nayak, led by 'Le président', and the Bonande rebels led by Colonel Theo, there is some sign of peace negotiations. But not everyone is in favor of peace and one can feel the tension. The night of truth starts with a festive dinner, but the village idiot Tomoto always seems capable of ruining the attempts for peace with violence and provocation.

Literary adaptation: Thru the story of a quiet teenage boy introduced to a powerful wrestling champ, we learn about the specific features of a national tradition in Senegal.

Set amidst the civil war of Algeria in the 1990s, Enough! is the story of two women. Emel is a Westerner whose husband, a journalist, is missing - perhaps kidnapped or even killed for articles he's written.

El- Manara, is a brutally direct depiction of Algerian society during the rise of fundamentalist Islam, which was to give rise to civil war following the annulment of the 1991 elections, in which the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won. It follows the life of Asma who now lives with her daughter in France, having, like many Algerians, fled the war.The film flashes back to Algiers where Asma, a university lecturer shares an apartment with her friends Ramadan, a doctor and Fawzi, a newspaper journalist. They attend the Manara festivities, celebrating Prophet Mohamed's anniversary. The event, a peaceful carnival with music and fireworks, is used as a backdrop to subsequent social transformations, and acts to give the viewer an idea of Muslim traditions in Algeria, which are placed in confrontation with the Wahabite ideology of the FIS. The three young people face obstacles to their friendship and carefree life as the traumas of the 1988 Algerian uprising and ensuing repression brings them face-to- face with their values. Beyond Algeria, the film provides keys to understand the fragility of democratic cultures in the region along with the mechanisms of disseminating fundamentalist Islamist ideas.

A group of children living on the street leave their gang, prompting retribution from the gang's leader. After one of the children dies, the rest try to come up with the resources to give their friend a proper burial.

Fraser Ayres stars as Jamie, also known as Rage, a mixed-race, angry youth living on a grim council estate in South London. He is part of a rap trio with his two friends Godwin and Thomas.

Bintou is beaten by her husband Abel, for using housekeeping money to pay for her daughter to go to school. He believes that only his sons should be educated. Bintou is determined to earn the money herself, but the only skill she knows is growing millet sprouts. She has to find the pots, and obtain sacks of millet from the storekeeper, while her husband continually sabotages her efforts.

A man is wrongfully arrested and tortured to death after he is suspected of being part of a revolutionary group.

In the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government.

We see the developments in Egypt through the eyes of a twelve year old during the presidency of Nasser and the reactions on his step down after the Six Day War with Israel.

The story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land.

On January 2 1899, starting from the French Soudan, a french column under the commandment of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is send against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroun. Those captains and their african mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French autority try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains even kill the emissaries who are reaching them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heared about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.

The cinematic history of the worldwide effort to destroy South African apartheid, a story that has never been told before in any medium. An epic 7-film history on how a violent, racist, intractable government was destroyed by the concerted efforts of men and women working on multiple fronts inside and outside South Africa for more than four decades. The series follows three generations of the struggle inside South Africa and battles waged in sports arena, cathedrals, embassies,corporate boardrooms, rock concerts and gas stations around the globe, culminating in the most globalized human rights struggle in history.

Algeria's entry for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, "Zabana" chronicles the life of Ahmed Zabana, a man who fought for Algerian freedom in the Battle of Algiers. This film chronicles Zabana's fight to free his country to independence, and his death at the hands of French authorities.

In the 17th century a warrior woman fights for the independence of Angola. After witnessing the murder of her son and watching her people being humiliated by Portuguese colonizers, Njinga will become a Queen and struggle for their liberation embodying the motto: those who stay fight to win.

Sisters Olanna and Kainene return home to 1960s Nigeria, where they soon diverge on different paths. As civil war breaks out, political events loom larger than their differences as they join the fight to establish an independent republic.

DEATH METAL ANGOLA follows a loving Angolan couple, Sonia and Wilker, whose love for death metal music is bringing hope to the town and children of Huambo, and Angola as a country. The devastating reality of Angola's history of wars, and civil unrest has left the country's people torn, broken, and starving for something to give them peace. Sonia, and Wilker's dream to put on the first national rock festival ignites the emotions of the Angolan people, and helps them heal from the war stricken path Angola has left behind. This engaging reality of Angola touches the heart of the viewer, and sheds new light on a music genre that is not well understood.