Self
When President Abdoulaye Wade wanted to run for office yet again in 2011, a resistance movement formed on the streets. Shortly afterwards, a group of school friends, including rappers Thiat and Kilifeu, set up "Y'en a marre" ("We Are Fed Up"), with filmmaker Rama Thiaw soon coming on board to start documenting events – meetings, campaigns, arrests, concerts, states of exhaustion, trips – from an "insider" perspective. Over several years, a stirring portrait emerged of a youth protest movement to whom independent observers were not the only ones to ascribe the role of "kingmaker" in the last elections. Rama Thiaw shows the rappers and their environment with an intimacy whose cinematographic finesse provides space and context for the thorny conflicts between music and politics, street and state.
Director
A portrait of the mythical band Bembeya Jazz, which contributed to the heyday of Sekou Touré’s cultural revolution in Guinea. Created in 1961 in the heart of the rainforest, Bembeya Jazz rapidly became modern Africa’s greatest orchestra. 50 years later, immerse yourself in the history of a legend that livers on!
Director
During the civil war in Ivory Coast, as in other countries at war, the unmistakable importance of the media in the dissemination of information and for public opinion is obvious. This journalistic portrait of Télévision Notre Patrie, the rebels' TV station in the northern part of the country, is a thorough presentation of the history of this channel. Interviews with army commanders, correspondents, presenters and citizens underline the power the media have and make clear that the war is just as much a battle of communication as it is an armed conflict. At the same time, Télé Guerre shows how four years of civil war have depleted the country and which role the international community plays in the realisation of a fragile peace. Little is certain, and this also applies to the journalists who work on the rebels' side during the war and who sometimes cross the thin boundary between conveying information and propaganda.
