German-Burkina Faso cultural alliance within the framework of FESPACO, 16.-23.10.2021, Ouagadougou
Since 2007, artistic director Alex Moussa Sawadogo and his festival team have regularly enriched the German and Berlin film landscape with AFRIKAMERA – Current Cinema from Africa with outstanding productions from African countries and the diaspora, working closely with international film initiatives and festivals.
In late 2020, the Ministry of Culture of Burkina Faso appointed Sawadogo, a native of the country, as the new director of FESPACO Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou, one of the oldest and most important festivals on the African continent. The new director tied a series of innovative changes and innovations in the festival structure to this task in order to consolidate FESPACO’s reputation internationally.
A nice occasion to intensify the existing German-Burkina Faso cultural cooperation beyond Schlingensief’s opera village also for the genre film and thus to continue the transcultural exchange!
With the kind support of the German Foreign Office, a delegation of multipliers from Berlinale, DOKfest München, Afrika Film Festival Köln, GERMAN FILMS, AG Dok, Rushlake Media Distribution, Vision Kino Netzwerk für Film- und Medienkompetenz, Extra Vista Film & TV and others will travel to Ouagadougou under the coordination of the AFRIKAMERA team to initiate new collaborations and strengthen existing ones. One focus will be on co-productions, also in the field of children’s and youth film, and on improving the perception and distribution of African productions in Germany. Likewise, German productions will be presented for the first time at the festival in the official program and competition, therefore, among others, the multi-award-winning film directors* Ines Johnson-Spain (Becoming Black, 2019), Jide Tom Akinleminu (When a farm goes aflame, 2021) and Daniel Kötter (Rift Finfinnee, 2020) will be represented. Other German productions will be presented as part of the international film market MICA.