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Entries in Africa (25)

Saturday
Dec112021

Interview: "Escape from Mogadishu" director on following "Parasite" towards the Oscars

by Nathaniel R

The "Korean Wave" has exploded in the last decade as more and more international audiences eagerly lap up South Korean music, television, and film. The roots of that cultural tidal wave go back to the 1990s and, in film, particularly the early Aughts when a group of young directors took the country by storm with exciting genre films. Some of them like Park Chan Wook and Bong Joon-Ho have gone on to become international superstars but they weren't alone. Ryoo Seung-wan, one of several others to make waves in the Aughts with hits like Die Bad and The Unjust is, in some ways still rising. He recently had the biggest hit of his career and awards nominations at home with the action drama Veteran and, now, a handful of years later, another huge hit and his first Oscar submission. Escape from Mogadishu is a tense action drama and true story. When the Somali Civil War broke out in the 1990s, the North and South Korean embassies were thrust together, against their natural impulses, in a desperate attempt to survive.

We recently had the chance to sit down with Ryoo Seung Wan in Los Angeles as his film was screening for Academy voters. He was in something like a state of joyful disbelief, laughing as he told me "my parents were actually married at a venue called 'The Academy'!". This interview was conducted through a translator and has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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Saturday
Jan232021

Best International Feature: Lesotho, Morocco, Sudan

by Cláudio Alves

Our first voyage through the Best International Feature contenders took us to the films of the latest Oscar champions: South Korea, Mexico, and Chile. Now, we shall turn our attention to nations that haven't been nearly as lucky with AMPAS. The entire African continent, in fact, has been chronically ignored by the Academy ever since the genesis of this award. Shining a light on the African cinema in contention this year, we find the first-ever submissions from Lesotho and Sudan, as well as a deadpan comedy from Morocco…

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Saturday
Sep122020

"Night of the Kings" is our third International Oscar submission

by Nathaniel R

Director Philippe Lacôte and a still from "Night of the Kings" his second feature

We have our third reported Oscar submission for Best International Feature at the 2020 Oscars and this one is a rarity. Ivory Coast, a West African country, has only ever submitted two previous films to the race. Though Ivory Coast, a former French colony, became independent in 1960, their first submission Black and White in Color (1976), which won the Oscar, was the debut of French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud who was quickly snapped up by Hollywood. Ivory Coast didn't submit again until they had their own debut director, Philippe Lacôte. His first film, a crime drama called Run, was submitted to represent the country in 2015 and his sophomore feature will represent the country again. Screen Daily recently spoke with the filmmaker about why there are so few African films at A-list festivals and how this new film came into being.

Night of the Kings which premiered this past week in Venice, is a Scheherazade-like story about a thief (Bakary Koné, pictured above) who becomes a storyteller in order to survive in the infamous MACA jail in the city of Abidjab (Lacôte's home town). The story the thief is telling is a true one about a crime lord called Zama King but  Lacôte wasn't interested in making a traditional biopic (bless him!). French actors Steve Tientcheu (from last year's Oscar nominated Les Miserables) and the always incredible Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) co-star.

Previously
Poland selects Never Gonna Snow Again
Switzerland selects My Little Sister

Tuesday
Jun162020

Almost There: Idris Elba in "Beasts of No Nation"

by Cláudio Alves

Spike Lee's latest joint, Da 5 Bloods, was released on Netflix last week and people are already talking about the possibility of Oscar glory. Delroy Lindo, in particular, is getting plenty of attention for what many call the best performance of his career. He's an early contender for the Academy Award. To observe such a reaction is to see how far Netflix has come in the past few years, effectively carving a place for itself in the Oscar race. It wasn't always like this and we need only look back at 2015 to find proof of it. Then, rewarding the cinematic excellence of films produced by streaming companies was still a relative taboo, a bridge too far for many awards bodies. 

If it weren't for the early resistance of AMPAS towards Netflix, Idris Elba would probably already be an Oscar-nominated actor…

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Friday
Apr272018

Tribeca: "Nigerian Prince" is a thrilling debut

by Jason Adams

Sitting inside my email spam folder right now there is a letter from "Mrs.Celine Peters from United State Of America" who is dying of cancer and wants to "donate my funds to you, so you can disburse to charities, widows, orphans and less privileged." There is also a notification that I have won the Swiss Lotto, which is quite a bit of mad luck since I have never played the Swiss Lotto. Oh and there is a warning from "FBI Cyber Security" that I have been dealing with African cyber scammers and if I will just stop doing that I will somehow be given 29 million dollars! I'm not sure how to follow the logic on the last one.

Have you ever stopped to think about who's writing these spam messages? Writer/director Faraday Okoro clearly wondered the same thing, and he used that question as the gateway into his thrilling debut feature-film Nigerian Prince. Who would do such a thing? This is who, and this is why...

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