Narrative Sovereignty

While most of the world was still fighting the pandemic, Africa had a much-overlooked plague of locusts descending on it. This reflects a major problem with the rest of the world, as we often ignore the African continent as a whole while it’s still often portrayed as unruly and dangerous in media. African cinema in particular doesn’t get much attention due to the lack of distribution in our Euro-centric focus on international cinema.

It’s hard to summarize African cinema as a whole –especially with the stark contrasts between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Colonialism still has lasting effects on almost all of these countries.

In the late colonial period, Jean Rouch, as a French outsider, captured African voices at a time when Africans themselves were rarely behind the camera. His films like Moi, un Noir (1958) blur fiction and documentary in a style later coined as ethno-fiction. While some argue his work democratized cinematic perspective, others critique it as another form of colonial gaze –even if collaborative. He was working during the late colonial era, and the power dynamics of that time bleed into the way his subjects are viewed.

In response to this imbalance, Mandabi (1968) by Ousmane Sembène offered a landmark moment in post-colonial cinema. It was the first film shot in Wolof, directly addressing Senegalese audiences without any need for French sensibilities. Sembène had already made Black Girl (1966), but Mandabi was a critique of colonial bureaucracy, religion, and neocolonial attitudes while framed as a simple story about a man trying to cash a money order.

Touki Bouki, directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, burst onto the scene five years later, blending surrealism with post-colonial disillusionment. It didn’t attempt to correct the outsider’s view; it sidestepped it completely. Mambéty presented a fragmented narrative that mirrored the fragmented identity of his characters—young lovers caught between Dakar and the dream of Paris. Where Sembène taught, Mambéty questioned.

In North Africa, Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine was exploring his own society in Cairo Station (1958), a neorealist tragedy that centered around a disabled newspaper vendor. Chahine’s work is often left out of the conversation around African cinema, even though Egypt had one of the most prolific film industries in the world during the mid-20th century. Cairo Station is a reminder that African cinema can’t be pigeonholed—not by geography, style, or intent.

Fast forward to today, and we see Nigeria’s Nollywood becoming one of the largest film industries in the world. Though often maligned for its speed and output, Nollywood represents an alternative production model. It doesn’t wait for validation. Films are made fast, on the cheap, and with wide domestic appeal. Streaming services have started to catch on, with Netflix distributing titles like Lionheart (2018), signaling a shift in how African cinema enters global consciousness.

Uganda’s Nabwana I.G.G. might be a one-man cinematic revolution. With a computer cobbled together from spare parts, he and his Wakaliwood crew created Who Killed Captain Alex? (2010), a DIY action flick that went viral for its sheer energy and homemade special effects. It’s not polished, but it’s electric. Like Nollywood, Wakaliwood proves that resource constraints don’t limit creativity.

But African cinema isn’t just genre films or political allegory. Talking About Trees (2019), a Sudanese documentary by Suhaib Gasmelbari, follows four aging filmmakers as they try to reopen an abandoned movie theater. It’s a quiet elegy for what was lost to decades of censorship and military rule, but also a meditation on the endurance of art. It ends with silence—the same silence that greets so many African films never screened beyond their own borders.

So how do we talk about African cinema? We don’t. Not as a whole. We talk about Malian cinema, South African cinema, Tunisian cinema. We talk about directors and movements, not just nations. We resist the flattening gaze.

Africa is not a genre.

Films

People

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