Mama Africa

Under the collective name Mama Africa, five female directors from five different countries of Africa each made a short film. While the films are very different in choice of subject and approach, they all want to be rid of prejudices about African women and focus on powerful female protagonists who make their own choices. In Riches, by Ingrid Sinclair (Zimbabwe), who has won several prizes, the young teacher Mollie moves to the countryside hoping for a better life. In this hostile community she loses her job and the love of her child, but not her will to fight. Bridget Pickering from Namibia made Uno's World, a drama about the pretty single mother Uno and her two admirers: the principled Kaura, father of her child, and the apparently civilised, but crooked Jose. The Nigerian Ngozi Onwhura tells in Hang Time the tragic story of the poverty-stricken yet talented basketball player Kwame, who pays a very high price for the new basketball boots with which he wants to impress an American scout. One Evening in July, by the Tunisian Raja Amari, shows how Saida, a sixty-year-old beauty specialist for brides, finds herself in a moral quandary when her customer Miriam decides to kill her intended on her advice. Fanta Nacro from Burkina Faso made in A Close-Up on Bintou a comedy about the housewife Antoinette, who sets up a lucrative business despite the opposition of her husband.