From the 17th century up until as recently as the mid-20th century, much of Africa (particularly North Africa and West Africa) fell under French colonial rule. Today, 20 African countries still list French as one of their official languages, from Benin to Togo. This has created an interesting tension in the world of African cinema, with many well-known films from the continent depicting stories of colonial oppression, even as they are produced in the language of that oppressor.
For decades, most of the French-language films made in Africa were ethnographic films about colonies directed by Europeans to justify the mission of colonization. Several African countries also provided exotic backdrops for such films as Jacques Becker’s Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs (“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”) (1954) and Julian Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937).
But beginning in the 1950s, short films made by African filmmakers—Soumanou Vieyra’s “Africa on the Seine,” Albert Mongita’s “The Cinema Lesson,” Emmanuel Lubalu’s “Inflated Tires”—began to crop up. But Ousmane Sembène’s 1961 film Black Girl, the first feature by an African filmmaker to be released internationally, marked a turning point. Sembène began his career as a novelist, and, aware of the high rate of illiteracy in Africa, shifted to film as a means to reach a larger audience. Once he started making realist films about Africa that locals could relate to, other directors followed.
Even after most French colonies in Africa gained their independence from the French, France continued to provide technical and financial assistance to African filmmakers, giving a boost to the continent’s burgeoning film industry—and ensured that many films coming out of Africa were still in the French language. The government, however, censored many of the films that were critical of colonization or the French government and military, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s The Little Soldier (1960), Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1967), and Ousmane Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye (1988).
Today, French-African cinema is thriving. African directors, as well as French directors raised on the continent, have used film as a tool to express the rich and varied stories that tie these two cultures together. So here is our list of the best French-language films set in Africa.
The 12 Best French Films Set in Africa
1. Atlantics, directed by Mati Diop (2019)
In a coastal suburb of Dakar, Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) is engaged to a wealthy man, Omar, but she loves Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), a lowly construction worker whose boss hasn’t been paying him. When Omar’s bed catches fire on their wedding day, the police suspect Ada and Souleiman, but he has gone missing, along with a group of his co-workers, believed to be lost at sea. People in their town begin behaving strangely, including the young detective in charge of the case. Is it possible that the ghosts of the men lost at sea have returned to get revenge on the boss who cheated them? If so, will Ada have a chance to see her dead lover one last time?
Stream on Netflix.
2. Black Girl, directed by Ousmane Sembène (1966)
Known as the father of African film, the great Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène’s groundbreaking work made him the most renowned African filmmaker of the twentieth century, perhaps of all time. His debut feature, based on one of his own short stories, stars Mbissine Thérèse Diop as Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who uproots herself from a small village outside Dakar to Antibes to work as a nanny for a rich French family. Her fantasy of a glamorous life in France is shattered as she becomes virtually imprisoned in her new home, forced to cook and clean non-stop, constantly disrespected by her bosses. The film is political in showing the ways colonial oppression lives on in the post-colonial world and, maybe more importantly, by simply placing the interior life of a marginalized Black woman at the center of this tragic tale.
Stream on Max. Purchase on The Criterion Channel.
3. The Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo (1966)
Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and nominated for multiple Academy Awards, this film has been revered and emulated by directors as varied as Costa Gavra, Werner Herzog, and Steven Soderbergh, and is today considered one of the great political films of all times. The film zooms in on Algerian revolutionaries fighting to force the colonial French government out of the country during the Algerian War, which raged from 1954 to 1962. Scenes of French officers torturing local rebels for information are as tense and brutal as those of locals planting bombs in crowded cafés. Black and white documentary-style cinematography brings powerful realism to the increasingly deadly acts of violence committed on both sides of the conflict.
4. Beau Travail, directed by Claire Denis (1999)
The great Claire Denis’ loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd is a minimalist masterpiece of pure poetry—the poetry of men struggling against their basest instincts, with sculpted male bodies moving against an impassive African backdrop that couldn’t care less about the human drama playing out in the sand. Seen in flashbacks against the harsh desert of Djibouti, French Foreign Legion Sergeant Galoup (Denis Lavant) serves under Commanding Officer Forestier (Michel Subor), whose attention is drawn to a promising new recruit, Sentain (Grégoire Colin). The obsessive jealousy triggered in Galoup makes him lash out at Sentain, setting in motion a series of events that threatens to destroy both men. While the film focuses on the power dynamics between the two men, to Denis it was as much about capturing their bodies on film, bodies fueled by envy and repressed desire. Agnès Godard’s outstanding work on this film won her the César Award for Best Cinematography.
Stream on Max, Google Play, Apple TV or The Criterion Channel.
5. Touki Bouki (Journey of the Hyena), directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty (1973)
In what is considered the first African experimental film—and a stunning filmmaking debut—Senegalese rebels-in-love Mory (Magaye Niang) and Anta (Mareme Niang) take off on a crime spree à la Bonnie and Clyde. Disenchanted with post-independence Dakar, their heads full of rose-colored Parisian dreams, the glamorous pair hops on Mory’s motorcycle, with its zebu horns on the handlebars, determined to lie, cheat, and steal their way out of Africa. Bouncing wildly between realism and surrealism in an electric avant-garde cacophony of bold imagery and sound straight out of the French New Wave, Mambéty stunned audiences with his fresh, creative vision. As Mory wavers between loyalty to his homeland and the siren song of wealth and possibility abroad, the lovers’ journey becomes a metaphor for tension between modernism and tradition in postcolonial Africa. The cult classic was boosted by a 2008 restoration by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. In the ultimate act of pop culture reverence, in 2018 Jay-Z and Beyoncé posed as Mory and Anta for their On the Run II tour ads.
Stream on Max or The Criterion Channel.
6. Letter From My Village, directed by Safi Fay (1976)
In the first commercially distributed film directed by an African woman, Ngor (Assane Faye) hopes to marry Columba (Maguette Gueye), but drought has destroyed the crops in his village and he can’t afford to pay her dowry. In hopes of making some real money, he travels to Dakar, where he finds only mistreatment and exploitation. Framed as a letter from a villager to a friend (read by the director herself), the film uses a mix of documentary and narrative footage of the rural Senegalese village where Faye grew up, and acts as a criticism of colonial single-crop farming practices, which often left villagers destitute. The groundbreaking film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
Stream on rarefilmm.
7. Chocolat, directed by Claire Denis (1988)
The French director Claire Denis grew up in colonial West Africa, where her father was a civil servant, and her debut film reflects her years there. In the film, a woman named France (Mireille Perrier) thinks back on her childhood in Cameroon, where as a lonely child she befriended their Cameroonian servant Protée (Isaach de Bankolé). She remembers—even if she only sensed it at the time—the sexual tension between Protée and her mother (Giulia Boschi), a deep longing that could not be consummated because race and societal convention prevented it. Thematically and aesthetically, it is clear that Africa resonates strongly with Denis. It lives in her blood, her bones, and her narrative impulses, as much as her memories. She captures the stillness, lushness, and quiet, the beauty of the sun as it colors the earth, and the insurmountable tension of black and white skin circling one another in a dance of distance, attraction, and impossibility.
Stream on The Criterion Channel.
8. Adama: The World of Wind, directed by Simon Rouby (2015)
When his brother runs away to join the army, a 12-year-old boy leaves his idyllic West African village to find him and bring him back. His suspenseful and eye-opening journey takes him through a sandstorm to the World of Wind, where he faces the horrors of war and colonial exploitation for the first time. Created using a mix of drawing, painting, ink, and 3D animation, the film, which premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, brings childhood innocence face to face with the violence, madness, and despair of a world at war.
9. Borders, directed by Apolline Traoré (2017)
The third film by Apolline Traoré, a director born in Burkina Faso and educated in the U.S., is a road movie about four women—Adjara, Emma, Sali, and Vishaa—who meet on a bus trip from Senegal to Nigeria. While traversing the stunning landscapes of Bamako, Cotonou, Ouagadougou, and Lagos, they face stifling heat, highway robbers, and consistent evidence of corruption and violence against women. Although they are from different regions of Africa, the new friends realize they are more similar than different, and to get through this life-changing, high stakes journey intact, they’ll have to stick together, have each other’s backs, and think hard about what kind of people they want to be in this world.
Borders is not currently available on digital platforms.
10. War Witch (Rebelle), directed by Kim Nguyen (2012)
In a film that blends brutal reality with flashes of magical realism, 12-year-old Komona (Rachel Mwanza) is abducted by rebels and forced to kill her parents, before being handed an AK-47 and getting conscripted as a rebel soldier. “Respect your guns. They are your mother and your father,” the reluctant orphaned soldiers are told. In a powerful tale of human resilience shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Komona endures merciless training amidst the atrocities of war. When she is the only survivor of a battle against the government army, the rebels name her their war witch. Superstition, witchcraft, and spirits play a role in Komona’s fate, and we see the world through her eyes, the eyes of a child compelled to grow up too soon—and to suffer and learn from the world’s horrors. War Witch was nominated for an Academy Award, and won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlin, along with 10 Canadian Screen Awards (including Best Motion Picture).
Stream on YouTube, Plex, or Tubi.
11. Dakan (Destiny), directed by Mohamed Camara (1997)
Considered the first West African queer film, this story of two Guinean boys in love was controversial from the start. The groundbreaking film begins with 20-year-olds Manga and Sory, making out in a car. As expected, their parents loudly disapprove. Manga is sent to a traditional healer to cure him of his homosexuality, and both boys are eventually married off to women—but their feelings for each other endure. While the film was embraced by Western audiences, it sent shockwaves through Africa. Camara was cursed and attacked, and the director often feared for his life. He tells the story of Touki Bouki director Djibril Diop Mambéty famously leaving the film’s press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered, and telling him, “You can be sure that your career is over, but in a hundred years, people will still talk about you.” More recently, Inxeba (2017), a South African film about a closeted relationship; Nairobian lesbian coming-of-age drama Rafiki (2018); and the Nigerian lesbian love story Ifé faced protests and bans. And Mambéty was right: Camara has not made another film since.
12. Moolaadé, directed by Ousmane Sembène (2004)
Sembène’s final film before his 2007 death at 84 takes on a subject that will make some people queasy: female genital mutilation. In the master’s hands, the film—which won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes—doesn’t get into the bloody details. It isn’t a sentimental, rage-fueled call to action. When a group of girls flee their “purification” ceremony, they are taken in by Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a woman who, after years of painful sex, refused to subject her daughter to the practice. Colle evokes moolaadé, a form of magical protection, tying a red string around her gate that curses anyone who crosses it. Meanwhile, her daughter Amsatou (Salimata Traoré) defies her mother, fearing her fiancé will return from a trip to France unwilling to marry her. (Traditionally, it is explained, men won’t marry a woman who hasn’t been “cut.”) Colle’s defiance forces the villagers to examine their traditional systems of female subjugation, but there is no easy answer. Sembène’s work digs deeply into moral codes and the modern impulse to question tradition. The film offers a poignant look at a community struggling against each other, only to reinforce its humanity.
Stream on rarefilmm.
Andrea Meyer has written creative treatments for commercial directors, a sex & the movies column for IFC, and a horror screenplay for MGM. Her first novel, Room for Love (St. Martin’s Press) is a romantic comedy based on an article she wrote for the New York Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a ploy to meet men. A long-time film and entertainment journalist and former indieWIRE editor, Andrea has interviewed more actors and directors than she can remember. Her articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Elle, Glamour, Variety, Time Out NY, and the Boston Globe.
