Universality comes at too high a price
‘African’ films should not need to be baked in a Hollywood oven before being served.
Wilfred Okiche
What makes a film African? This question was top of mind at the recent 50th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival, with all its historical and political complications. Is a film African because it is exclusively financed and produced on the continent? One would think so. But at this year’s festival, not one of the titles fulfilled these conditions.
The Toronto programme features many African names, stories, and countries, but the financial and executive power behind them is not always from the continent. Countries like Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa boast popular film industries that serve their local populations. But filmmakers with elevated sensibilities who want to operate on a certain scale are all having to look beyond the continent.
Diya, for instance, is the rare film from Chad by a filmmaker not named Mahamat-Saleh Haroun to score high-profile visibility. Achille Ronaimou’s debut feature, a moral thriller about a man who must pay a blood debt, received support from France, Germany, and Côte d’Ivoire. Ditto Zamo Mkhwanazi’s striking Laundry (Uhlanjululo), a co-production between South Africa and Switzerland. Set in the 1960s, Laundry details the unravelling of a black family as they navigate the oppressive conditions of apartheid.
The festival’s documentary programme opened with The Eyes of Ghana, about nonagenarian Chris Hesse and his lifelong attempts to preserve reels of his work from his time as Kwame Nkrumah’s personal cinematographer in the 1950s and 1960s. The screening was introduced virtually by Barack and Michelle Obama, who served as executive producers.
It is easy to see how the Obamas would be attracted to Nkrumah’s statesmanship and his goal of liberation through film but The Eyes of Ghana, as directed by Academy Award winner Ben Proudfoot, is about as American in sensibility as apple pie.
Hesse is an appealing subject, and his cause is noble, but Proudfoot manages to turn what could have been a raw and intimate project about cinema’s role in mythmaking into a sentimental, Hollywood-like celebration that sacrifices local flavour for bland universality. It’s no surprise the United States is listed as the sole production country. By contrast, last year’s transfixing Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat handled this kind of situation better.
How about the case of Tarik Saleh, whose political thriller Eagles of the Republic marks the completion of his Cairo trilogy of films?
Saleh was born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and Egyptian father. He has been banned from entering Egypt by the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi regime since 2017 and recreates Cairo in Istanbul for his films. Eagles of the Republic is Saleh’s second film selected to represent Sweden in the Oscars’ international feature category. The film’s plot is somewhat of a clapback. George Fahmy (Fares Fares), a popular movie star, is hired by the regime to play Sisi in a propaganda biopic but finds himself in the midst of high-level political machinations.
African filmmakers often look outward, too. Taking advantage of the freedom allowed by the positive reception of her last two projects – including two Oscar nominations – Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania turns her gaze to the carnage in Gaza.
The film follows the death of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli Defence Force during its invasion of the Gaza Strip.
The Voice of Hind Rajab has a hybrid documentary-fiction conceit that is as ethically ambiguous as that employed in Ben Hania’s 2023 Four Daughters.
Call recordings are combined with scripted re-enactments based on firsthand testimonies and transcripts. The Voice of Hind Rajab is also a French co-production.