Berlin: African films are enjoying a high profile at this year’s Berlinale festival, with debuts from South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR) turning heads along with a new take on “Nollywood”.
While there are no African films in the main competition at Europe’s first major film festival of the year, several documentaries and features from the continent are running in the event’s sidebar sections.
In the documentary “No Simple Way Home”, director Akuol de Mabior holds a deeply personal lens to the recent history of South Sudan and the legacy of her father, John Garang de Mabior, a revolutionary leader who was killed in 2005.
De Mabior, who was born and raised in exile, turns the camera on her mother and sister as they strive to find meaning and hope in a country weighed down by years of political and personal trauma.
The film aims to “generate conversations about what it means in an African context to feel at home in your own country”, De Mabior told AFP.
“Initially I wanted to make a film about my mother, because I had this feeling that history’s tendency to forget women’s contributions. I had this feeling that my father would be remembered and I worried that she wouldn’t be,” she said.
