The Guardian‘s Africa Network has collected a list of eight African movies to look forward to this year. From Nigeria they list Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun which was directed by Biyi Bandele, author of Burma Boy, and will star Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Continue reading
In God Loves Uganda documentarian Roger Ross Williams casts a critical eye on the presence and growing influence of evangelical Christianity on the African continent. The film focuses on Uganda in particular, where local religious leaders fueled by Kansas’s International House of Prayer tirelessly work towards promoting legislation that could threaten the lives of LGBT Ugandans.
Via Shadow and Act
Big grant for African filmmakers
Two filmmakers from the African continent have been commended by major film bodies for their bold adaptation of an Academy Award-winning film into a true African epic.
The Boda Boda Thieves, a film by South African producer James Tayler and Ugandan director Donald Mugisha, has recently been selected as one of five films – out of 113 submissions – to receive a grant from the World Cinema Fund at the prestigious Berlinale Festival in Germany.
It’s an adaptation of Italian director Vittorio De Sica’s original 1948 classic The Bicycle Thieves, which won the New York Film Critics Circle award the following year for Best Foreign Film, and an honorary Oscar in 1950. The Italian version was based on Luigi Bartolini’s novel of the same name.
