Development

Ghana is considered a model country in West Africa - democratic, open, ambitious. Ghana's government is proud and likes to refer to good governance: to the best rule of law in West Africa and above all to stable economic growth - despite the global financial crisis. The government is determined to achieve faster socio-economic development, especially by expanding the industrial sector. More

In a world of one-way traffic, where the northern countries are exporting their economic and political model worldwide, one country in Latin America has undertaken a profound reform of these models to invent a new type of governance, both pragmatic and humanistic. The country in question is Ecuador. Rafael Correa, an established economist, who came to politics as a man on a mission, was elected President in 2006. Since coming to power, he has transformed a country with archaic structures into a social, independent, ecological and participative democracy. More

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TGV is an express bus service between Dakar, Senegal, and Conakry, Guinea, operated by the enterprising Rambo and his assistant, Dembo. Before setting off, Rambo and his passengers are warned of the danger that lies ahead on their route. The Bassari are carrying out a revolt at the Guinea border, leading to an exodus of refugees from their villages. On hearing the news, only a dozen or so passengers decide to make the risky trip. During the arduous journey, each passenger’s motivation for making the trip is slowly revealed. More

This Senegalese melodrama tells the story of a young girl called Mossane who lives in a village between the ocean and the savannah. There, veneration for the traditions is very common. There's a legend saying that every other century a girl is born who is doomed because of her beauty. Mossane is only fourteen years old but is already considered to be extraordinary beautiful. Even her own brother is in love with her. According to the custom she has been promised to a rather wealthy man called Diogoye since the day of her birth. More

Yumiko is a young woman from Osako, whose life is defined by the death of her loved ones. She lost her grandmother at the age of twelve, and her husband Ikuo, who is the reincarnation of her grandmother to her, commits suicide some months after the birth of their child. Once more Yumiko loses a person she had really loved. Five years later she marries Tamio, a man who lives by the sea together with his eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Her pain has ceased until the day she returns to her place of birth and gets caught up by her memories. More

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Together with his young son a father heads off for an inimitable quest: By car they drive through the nightmarish chaos of the erathquake catastrophe from 1990. The destruction demanded over 50'000 deaths, entire villages were razed to the ground. People report how they were suddenly faced with the catastrophe, standing in front of nothing, having lost their entire families with over thirty relatives. But still the film is not a report of terror. More

«A Place in the World» by Adolfo Aristarain, looks at people who, having fought for a better world, are in the aftermath of defeat. Federico Luppi plays the main character as a teacher who is back from along exile he shared with his doctor wife, Cecilia Roth. Both are living with their teenaged son, Batyi, in a San Luis valley seven hundred miles away from Buenos Aires. While baking bread for his poor pupils, Luppi inspires and leads a community effort aimed at getting fair prices for the farmers' output, sidestepping ruthless landowner Rodolfo Ranm. More

Ta dona is the story about a young forest ranger and his life in the African country of Mali in the 1990s. He's a young Bambara man, an employee in Mali's Ministry of Rivers and Forests, searching for an ancient herbal remedy for childbirth, a plant with mythical healing powers. The secret knowledge he is trying to achieve, he wants to use for the people's good. He sees that his work holds the key to the future of his country (through reforestation) and he dislikes the short-sighted, money-grubbing ways of his superiors. More

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In this last film Ritwik Ghatak himself plays Nilkantha Bagchi, an alcoholic, in the character's own words «a broken intellectual». His wife leaves him taking away his books and records which were his only properties left. When Bagchi insisted she shouldn't, Durga replied that she is taking this away so that his son grows up with these books and music, but he managed to keep a fan which he sells to buy country liquor to start his unusual and abstract ride. More

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Gaston Kaboré’s movie «Zan Boko explores the conflict between tradition and modernity with a family in a rural contexr. It has been for long time a central theme in many African films. Kaboré tells the poignant story of a village family swept up in the current tide of urbanization. In doing so, «Zan Boko» expertly reveals the transformation of an agrarian, subsistence society into an industrialized commodity economy. More

Vivid social satire with overtones of Romeo and Juliet, Finye (The Wind) tackles the generation gap in post-colonial West Africa. Its heroine is the pot smoking daughter of a provincial military governor who falls in love with a fellow university student, the descendent of one of Mali's chiefs of an earlier age. Both families object to the union and to the lover's growing involvement in student strikes against the corrupt government. A mix of politics, romance and social commentary, Finye casts a critical eye on both the ancient and modern values. More

Senegalese filmmaker Ababacar Samb says, «Jom is a Wolof word which has no equivalent in English or French, Jom means courage, dignity, respect. It is the origin of all virtues.» To celebrate the concept, Samb uses the griot as the nexus of multiple stories and Senegal’s collective memory. To inspire striking workers, the griot tells of a legendary prince, Dieri Dior Ndella, who sacrificed his life during colonialism, and Koura Thiaw, an entertainer who took up the cause of oppressed domestics in the 1940s, both becoming heroes to their people. More