What is an African film?
There isn’t a single “African cinema” and the films produced over the last 100 years offer at best a partial image of the history and current development of cinema on the continent, and the continent itself.
There is African cinema in geographic terms — arbitrary continental boundaries inherited from the colonial era.
There is African cinema in non-geographic terms — simply, stories about Africans and/or African communities outside the continent.
For the sake of this item, an African film is defined as a film (narrative or documentary) that tells a story (or stories) about Africans in Africa, or the African immigrant experience anywhere in the world. The story, characters, and location can be real or entirely fictional in each scenario. The filmmaker’s ancestry is irrelevant; the story must foreground an African’s experience wherever they exist.
Bearing that in mind, below is a list of African feature films that premiered (screened publicly/commercially for the first time) somewhere in the world (festivals, theatrical, or streaming releases), in 2022. Each title is flanked by the country (or countries) represented. The list is by no means exhaustive and will be updated as needed.
What’s missing? Leave a comment below.
| A Summer in Boujad (Morocco) |
| African Moot (South Africa) |
| Amandla (South Africa) |
| Amansa Tiafi (Public Toilet Africa) (Ghana) |
| Aníkúlápó (Nigeria) |
| Ashkal (Tunisia) |
| Ayaanle (Kenya) |
| Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (U.S.) |
| Brotherhood (Nigeria) |
| Cesária Évora (Cape Verde) |
| Chief Daddy 2: Going for Broke (Nigeria) |
| Elder’s Corner (U.S., Nigeria) |
| Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman (Nigeria) |
| Father’s Day (Rwanda) |
| Fragments From Heaven (Morocco) |
| Free Money (Kenya) |
| Harka (Tunisia) |
| Hawa (France, Senegal) |
| Hey You (Nigeria) |
| Juju Stories (Nigeria) |
| Justice Served (South Africa) |
| Juwaa (DRC) |
| Kamla (Egypt) |
| Khamsa – The Well of Oblivion (Algeria) |
| King of Thieves (Nigeria) |
| Nanny (U.S. Sierra Leone) |
| Neptune Frost (U.S., Rwanda) |
| No Simple Way Home (South Sudan) |
| Nous (France, Senegal) |
| Our Brothers (Algeria) |
| Our Lady of the Chinese Shop (Angola) |
| Queens (Morocco) |
| Saint Omer (France, Senegal) |
| Shimoni (Kenya) |
| Silverton Siege (South Africa) |
| Tembele (Uganda) |
| TeraStorm (Kenya) |
| The Blue Caftan (Morocco) |
| The Dam (Sudan, Lebanon, France) |
| The Gravity (France, Burkina Faso) |
| The Last Queen (Algeria) |
| The Planter’s Plantation (Cameroon) |
| The Set Up 2 (Nigeria) |
| The Umbrella Men (South Africa) |
| The Woman King (U.S.) |
| Tirailleurs (France, Senegal) |
| Tori and Lokita (France) |
| Tug of War (Vuta N’Kuvute) (Tanzania) |
| Under The Fig Trees (Tunisia) |
| Valley of a Thousand Hills (South Africa) |
| We, Students! (Nous, étudiants!) (Central African Republic) |
| When Women Speak (Ghana) |
| Xalé (Senegal) |
| Yoon (Senegal) |
| You Are My Favourite Place (South Africa) |
I dont think ayaanle is kenyan its from Somalia, only part of it shot in Kenya