Washington University’s African Film Festival celebrates its 17th year

From Friday, March 24 through Sunday, March 26, Washington University’s Annual African Film Festival celebrates its 17th year with an impressive program of three feature films and six shorts. Hailing from Senegal, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, the Congo, and the United Kingdom, the issues dramatized encompass a diverse range of topics with noteworthy stylistic choices.

All three feature films were their respective country’s submission for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film: “Xalé” from Sengal, Tanzania’s “Vuta N’Kuvute” (“Tug of War”), and France’s “Saint Omer,” which advanced to the Oscar shortlist. And the festival begins with this exceptional film, French director Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer,” based on a 2016 court case. Shockingly, Laurence Coly takes her mixed-race, fifteen-month-old Elise to a depressed resort area in northern France where she abandons her on the beach. Parisian novelist, our surrogate, Rama attends Coly’s trial as a presiding judge, a hostile prosecutor, and an empathetic defense attorney interrogate Coly. Mixing fictional and documentary texts, Diop burrows into the complex emotional truth and intelligence of this black woman trapped in this French world.

Saturday evening, in English and Swahili, “Tug of War” finds young Communist revolutionary Denge connecting with Indian Yasmin Fazal, both questioning values in British colonial Zanzibar, 1954. Sunday evening, “Xalé” focuses on fifteen-year-old Senegalese twins, Awa and Adama, following their dreams despite personal and political conflicts and confrontations.

First-rate short films precede the three features. Friday, in English and Yoruba, “Precious Hair & Beauty” visits a London high street hair salon for the day. Watching the action outside and the varied, often humorous clientele inside is entertaining and revealing. In “La Star,” Saturday’s short from the Congo, a frustrated director cajoles and tussles with his female lead to accept a kiss from her co-star, as she defies his direction. Sunday’s short from Nigeria, “Egúngún” (“Masquerade”) observes the awkward but poignant reuniting at a funeral in Lagos of two women who loved each other in their youth.

Also of note, at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, a Youth Matinee program presents three shorts: the animated “The Snail and the Whale,” the live action “Troll Girl,” and “My Better World,” a lively animated series profiling six Tanzanian/South African friends exploring and improving the world around them, learning from and supporting each other. This most welcome African Film Fest does what cinema does best—provide a window on other countries, people, and cultures. All films include English subtitles as needed. Screenings take place from March 24 through March 26 in Washington University’s Brown Hall 100. For more information, you may visit africanfilm.wustl.edu.