Ouaga Girls
A group of young women from Ouagadougou study at a girl school to become auto mechanics. The classmates become their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, all while they are going through the life changing transition into becoming adults in a country boiling with political changes. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.
Tales of Sand and Snow
In a quest to rediscover the spiritual values of his own people, an African filmmaker from the Gourmantche tribe of Burkina Faso visits an Aboriginal band, the Atikamekw of northern Quebec. The resulting documentary is a dialogue between those who divine the future in the sand with those who use snow-encased sweat lodges to reconnect with the spiritual world.
Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man
Thomas Sankara, former president of Burkina Faso, was known as "the African Che", and became famous in Africa due to his innovative ideas, his devastating humor, his spirit and his altruism. More than a classic biography, this film sheds light on the impact that this man and his politic made on Burkina Faso and Africa in general.
Afrikki
Concerning Violence
Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
The Three Scoundrels 2
The day after their disastrous escapade, our three scoundrels, although publicly forgiven, face the persistent bad mood of their wives. One idea emerges: to offer them a dream weekend by the sea in Côte D'ivoire. The plan goes as planned in Assinie, until... the charming delegation of the Miss O'Tentik pageant arrives to rehearse their ceremony.
Keita! The Voice of the Griot
It is an ordinary afternoon for young Mabo Keïta, at home, in Burkina Faso (West Africa). While his parents are taking a nap, he reads a schoolbook on the front porch when a stranger - an elderly man carrying his own hammock - appears for an unexpected visit. It turns out that the old man is a griot, a West African musician/entertainer whose performances include tribal histories and genealogies. The position of a griot is a time-honored one and passed down from father to son for many generations.
Sankara
Moolaadé
When a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.
Land of Upright People
October 2014. Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is the scene of an unarmed uprising that ousts the dictator in power since 1987 and later staves off an attempted coup. In 2015, the country votes freely for the first time in its history, yet real change remains allusive, especially regarding ongoing economic exploitation by foreign companies. In one year of struggle and resistance, the film follows the daily life of four Burkinabes: a musician and leader of the revolution, a local political candidate, a miner engaged in the labor movement, and an impoverished mother, all sharing hopes that the elections will change the country’s path.
Burkina Faso
Ouagadougou, September 2001: Adamà is a boy who is forced to leave school and work as a newsboy in order to pay for his sick mother's medical treatment. Two weeks after the attacks, Adamà sees a man who looks very similar to Osama bin Laden and decides to capture him with the help of his friends, in order to claim a $25 million bounty. Idrissa Ouédraogo's short for 11′09″01 September 11.
Sahel: Pátria ou Morte
For decades, the countries of the African Sahel region have been targets of colonialism and exploitation by France and other Western powers. This documentary addresses the popular resistance and new paths of development forged by Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali after experiencing civil and military uprisings in recent years. The film explores the popular resistance that sustains the revolution in the three Sahel countries and was made after extensive coverage of the ongoing social dynamics and geopolitical disputes.
Sankara et moi
At the time of the 30th anniversary of the death of Thomas Sankara, the African executive of a multinational mining company established in Africa, Tom - who has Americanized his first name Thomas - finds himself up against the ideal of his youth: each time he passes in front of a mirror, he sees himself with the red beret of the revolutionary leader on his head, and fears that his past will jeopardize his career...
Ouagadougou – portraits de dieux
Ouagadougou – Portraits of Gods (1992) explores contemporary Burkina Faso through the intertwined journeys of two Burkinabè men and a Belgian painter. As Christianity, Islam, and ancestral beliefs coexist in everyday life, the film reveals how the sacred is woven into ordinary existence. Blending intimate observation with visual portraiture, Benoît Lamy offers a poetic reflection on identity, spirituality, and the invisible forces that shape human lives.
Crackle of Time: Christoph Schlingensief and his Opera Village in Burkina Faso
Documentary about filmmaker, author, director, and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief and his last major project, building an opera village in Burkina Faso. What was initially planned as a festival theater soon developed into a more ambitious idea, and in addition to the theater, a school, a hospital, and living quarters for teachers and nursing staff were also planned. Beginning with the search for a suitable building site, the film also recounts the difficulties encountered during the work and Schlingensief's advancing cancer.
Burkina Faso 8600 km
Burkinabè Rising - The Art of Resistance in Burkina Faso
BURKINABÈ RISING: the art of resistnace in Burkina Faso showcases creative nonviolent resistance in Burkina Faso. A small, landlocked country in West Africa, Burkina Faso is home to a vibrant community of artists and engaged citizens, who provide an example of the type of political change that can be achieved when people come together. It is an inspiration, not only to the rest of Africa but also to the rest of the world. Through music, film, ecology, visual art, and architecture, the people featured in this film are carrying on the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Sankara. After assuming the presidency in 1983, Sankara was killed in a 1987 coup d'état led by his friend and close advisor Blaise Compaoré, who subsequently ruled the country as an autocrat for twenty-seven years. In October 2014, a massive popular insurrection led to his removal. Today, the spirit of resistance is mightier than ever in Burkina Faso.
Everything Here Holds Its Inverse
Set in a Burkina Faso organic cotton weaving cooperative, a cacophonous cotton-spinning apparatus eats, digests, and takes a breath. Threads become the organs of a whirling, burping, guzzling machine animated by hands, looms, vats, cogs, and feet. Where does the machine end and the body begin? The weaving cooperative promises equitable remuneration for workers in an industry beholden to its colonial predecessor: today, Burkinabè cotton farmers live in permanent debt to cotton companies financed by European capital. By focusing on the repetitive labor unfolding within a cooperative that claims to serve its workers, Everything Here Holds Its Inverse examines the tension between empowerment and evolving oppressions. Can the ties that bind and define also set free?
World Music Discoveries: Drums and Djembes of Burkina Faso
In the African nation of Burkina Faso, drums such as the djembe are more than a simple instrument; they have long been used for communication and storytelling as well as musical accompaniment, as this fascinating documentary illustrates. Explore the role the drum has played in Burkina Faso's history, and how the current generations' quest to move away from tradition threatens this time-honored instrument of oral history.
Sankara's Orphans
Thomas Sankara came to power in Burkina Faso in 1983, with the promise of a revolutionary government that would transform the West African country. To help build the revolution, he sent 600 children — many orphans from rural areas — to be educated in Cuba. But after Sankara’s assassination, the children were stranded. The last would only return to Burkina Faso in 2005. SANKARA’S ORPHANS tells their stories through interviews with some of the 600, along with archival footage of their lives on Cuba’s Isle of Youth — where both Sankara and Fidel Castro came to visit. Along with their education, the children worked in the fields and received weapons training. This, combined with their idealism, frightened the new Burkina Faso regime, which worried they might return and take up arms.