Zanzibar International Film Festival – Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Bastien (Brazil) – This is a film that I failed to understand. A seemingly good person is accused of committing a wrong, his little brother is tortured, the grandmother hears voices, and bad things happen. But why? I even ended up watching part of the film a second time, but still I could not connect the dots. 2/10

Nectar (Uganda) – I enjoyed this movie a lot. A man wants to kill his wife and he battles the voice of his conscience to find a fool proof way to do it. The viewer hears his thoughts and see why he hates her. Although I am not condoning killing, this movie is a somewhat whimsical take on the struggles one has when trying to solve a seemingly insolvable problem. And of course, the ending is not fully expected. 9/10

Hair That Moves (South Africa) – This is an after school special type of movie with a young girl who dreams of being like her idol. She believes that the secret is flowing hair. But this showing of the movie had bad sound, bad color, bad saturation, etc…The production distracted so much that nothing else mattered. 2/10

Sacred Waters (Rwanda) – It is great to see a movie that discusses African women’s sexuality, in this case female ejaculation. We heard from one of the filmmakers that the movie was banned in Rwanda for being too graphic (it wasn’t). The movie maker avoided being explicit, but this serves to continue to keep the topic mostly hidden with the movie showing people’s hesitancy to speak openly and embrace the human body. People need to make movies like this that push the boundaries. 7/10

Ishyaka, The Will to Live (Rwanda) – Hutus and Tutsis come together to understand the 1994 genocide that killed over a million people. This movie looks toward the future and wants to encourage people to find it in their hearts to forgive things that happened in the past. But they also want to make sure that people never forget what happened. This film needs to be seen. 9/10

Uprize! (South Africa) – This film looks back to the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Hearing the voices of the people who were there makes this a powerful piece, but many of the people were hard to understand. This film would have benefitted from captions throughout the entire film. 6/10

Yaadikoone (France) –A boy breaks his grandmother’s roof before the rainy season begins. No one has money to fix the roof, but Yaadikoone is named after a Robin Hood figure. Somehow things happen, but once again I am not able to figure how…or why. 2/10