Open Windows 

1990

• LUMUMBA :
  DEATH OF A PROPHET
• by Raoul Peck, feature (documentary), black and white/color, Haiti, 69 min.
• « If I die tomorrow, it’s because a white man has armed a black man », repeated future Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960. A highly personal film by a Haitian filmmaker who grew up in Leopoldville.

1992 

• HYENAS (Hyènes)
• by Djibril Diop Mambety, feature (fiction), Senegal, 1992, color, 110 min.
• Colobane, a small town asleep in the dusty heat of the Sahel, the ghost of a charming town struck by poverty. Griots announce incredible news: Linguère Ramatou (Ami Diakhate), thirty years on and now an arch-billionaire, is back. No more poverty. The population waits for Linguère at the entrance to the town. Draman Drameh (Mansour Diouf), once Linguère’s passionate lover, rushes in first.

Official competition – Cannes Film Festival 1992

1992

• QUARTIER MOZART
• by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, feature (fiction), Cameroon, 1992, color, 80 min.
• Re-imagining several folk tales into a contemporary setting, director Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s first feature film recounts the story of a young girl who is magically transformed into a swaggering Casanova nicknamed « My Guy ». While the focus is on « My Guy », several offbeat characters crowd the show, including a polygamist police chief whose daughter « My Guy » seduces and a witch whose handshake can make men’s genitals disappear. The combination of highly westernized characters and the charged folk tale atmosphere form a vision of today’s Africa. Quartier Mozart is as humorous as it is revealing and depicts the powerful influence of western pop culture.

1996/1998

• DEMOCRACY and cie 1 & 2
• by Mariama Hima, short (fiction), color, Niger, 1996, 2 min.
• Two one-minute films commissioned by GREC to mark the centenary of cinema.
• SILMANDÉ (Tourbillons)
• by Pierre Yaméogo, feature (fiction),color, Burkina Faso, 1998, 85 min.
• Following the imprisonment of his brother, a wealthy Lebanese merchant who has lived in Burkina Faso for two generations serves as an eye-opener on the rampant corruption of his country’s government.

1996

• FLAME
• by Ingrid Sinclair, feature (fiction), color, Zimbabwe, 90 min.
• In 1975, the « chimurenga » (war of liberation) is raging in Rhodesia. One night, a group of fighters come to recruit volunteers in the small village where Florence and Nyasha, both 15, live. Florence dreams of getting married. She falls in love with Comrade Danger, the group’s charismatic leader, and seems ready to follow him. Nyasha, for her part, is not insensitive to his ideological rhetoric. Florence’s father, Frederik, forbids his daughter to leave the village. But in revenge, the manager of the local bazaar denounces him to the Rhodesian authorities, and is arrested by the police. This allows Florence to persuade Nyasha to join the Freedom Fighters. Both leave their families and set off on a long and perilous journey across war-torn Rhodesia.

Director’s Fortnight Cannes 1996

1998

• LE CLANDESTIN
• by Zeka Laplaine, short (fiction), DR Congo, 1998, 15 min.
• The film is a letter written by a young illegal immigrant from Africa to his cousin in Lisbon (Portugal): hidden in a container, he has landed in the port of Lisbon. His traveling companion, an Angolan, is dead. As soon as he disembarks, our hero runs into a policeman, also black, who insists on following him on a silent chase through Lisbon, punctuated by increasingly disappointing encounters and humorous cardboard boxes.
  During this first day in paradise, he’s about to experience hell! From one misadventure to another, he decides to return to his homeland.

• FOOLS
• by Ramadan Suleman, feature (fiction), South Africa, 1998, color, 90 min.
• Charterston Township 1990. Professor Zamani is respected in the township. To be sure, he once raped one of his students but the community turned a blind eye. Zamani used to rail against the apartheid system but those days are long gone. Now he teaches South African history in the Afrikaner language and grudgingly organizes the picnic for National Day, which commemorates the Boers’ massacre of the Zulu nation… When Zani, the raped girl’s brother, returns from Swaziland where he had the chance to study, he is determined to change everything…

YOUNG AUDIENCES PROGRAM
(55 min/11-14 years old)

• DIPLOMATE À LA TOMATE
• by Samba Félix N’Diaye, (documentary), color, Senegal, 1989, 11 min.
• MWANSA THE GREAT
• by Rungano Nyoni, (fiction), color,  Zambia, 2011, 24 min.
• DA YIE
• by Antony Nti, (fiction), color, Ghana, 2019, 20 min.