Afrikamera: Films from Africa in Berlin

Held from November 8-13 in Berlin, the Afrikamera film festival explores themes such as migration and diaspora from an African perspective. "The Last Shelter," a 2021 documentary by Malian director Ousmane Samassekou, portrays the Caritas-run House of Migrants in Gao, Mali, where stranded migrants can find refuge as they hope to leave the Sahel to cross the Sahara desert on their way to Europe.

This documentary by Fatimah Dadzie follows the opposite path: "Fati's Choice" portrays a woman from Ghana who is disillusioned by her time in Italy and decides to return home to her children. But the people in her village do not understand her choice and resent the fact that she left Europe, seen as the continent of opportunity.

Beyond documentaries, the festival also features a series of short films, such as "Exiled" by Ager Oueslati. It tells the story of female migrants stranded in the desert city of Agadez in Niger, who feel like outcasts. Oueslati is also working on her first feature-length film.

Directed by Portuguese filmmaker Jose Miguel Ribeiro, "Nayola" is set in Angola, the world's second largest Portuguese-speaking country, on the western coast of Africa. The animation film evokes the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) through the portraits of three women of different generations. They are all traumatized in their own way by the bloody conflict.

Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza also interweaves three stories in his third feature film, "Father's Day." The protagonists' fates are all in a way related to Rwanda's genocide, which is however never directly named. The strong female characters of the film make it a tale of hope. The drama premiered in the Encounters section of this year's Berlinale.

This feature set in Central Africa is about resistance. A group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonial collective with hackers to overthrow the authoritarian-dictatorial regime exploiting them. Their camp is in an electronic waste dump, an otherworldly Afro-futurist setting. The film was directed by US poet musician and actor Saul Williams and Rwandan filmmaker and actress Anisia Uzeyman.