Sundance Film Festival Features:
World Cinema Doc Competition
– “How to Build a Library,” Maia Lekow, Christopher King (Kenya): Two Nairobi women work to transform what used to be a whites-only library until 1958.
– “Khartoum,” Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed (Sudan): Forced to leave Sudan following the outbreak of war, 5 people reenact their stories of survival and freedom.
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
– “Where the Wind Comes From,” Amel Guellaty (Tunisia): A rebellious teen and her introverted friend and a road trip through southern Tunisia.
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– “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions,” Kahlil Joseph (USA): Preeminent West African curator Funmilayo Akechukwu’s magnum opus leads her to the heart of the Atlantic, drawing a journalist into a journey that shatters her understanding of consciousness and time.
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR):
Hubert Bals Fund & CineMart
– “Enkop (The Soil),” Angela Wanjiku Wamai (Kenya): A neo-Western story of fifty-five-year-old Lorna Marwa’s fight to reclaim her life on the dusty expanses of Kenya’s volatile ranch land.
– “Eziko,” Babalwa Baartman, Jenna Cato Bass (South Africa): A noir mystery following an academic who journeys into the rural Eastern Cape in search of her sister.
CineMart
– “The Uganda Project,” Daniel Mann (Uganda): Investigation of a secret 1904 British Empire expedition to Uganda to assess it as a potential national home for the Jewish people.
HBF+Europe Post-production Support
– “Variations on a Theme,” Devon Delmar, Jason Jacobs (South Africa/Netherlands): An elderly goat herder is scammed into believing financial reparations are due to her family for WWII service, while her routines are disrupted on her 80th birthday as her family threatens her independence.
– “Invisible Flame,” Oskar Weimar (Kenya): In a coastal fishing community, fish begin to vanish, and Dani, an elderly woman rumored to be a witch, is blamed.
Harbour
– “Thank You Satan,” Hicham Lasri (Morocco): A dark comedy set in the 1990s about an ambitious writer pressured by his publisher to write a bestseller with a killer edge.