Language French (49)

It is quite an adjustment for Tansir, a qualified engineer, when he returns to Senegal after living in France for more than a decade. Despite the radical change in work and living conditions in Senegal, Tansir is convinced that life in Europe is just not suited to his African social and cultural aspirations.

An ingenious variation on the return of the prodigal son, this story of a criminal trying to make a new life is compelling for its moral force and memorable for its finely understated performances.

The ghost of the great Guinean leader Sekou Touré hovers fondly over this Cameroonian film. Through a warmly human story, the film debates the continent’s great 'development question' of whether rural self-sufficiency is better than a Western-style technocratic approach.

In some European colonies, the governing country might have been relatively lackadaisical about resistance movements – until they surface openly in active rebellion. This was certainly true of the British in India.

Life is on the up and up for Daam as he prepares himself for election to parliament. On the campaign trail in his hometown of Tableau Ferraile he sets eyes on the beautiful Gagnesiri, and proposes marriage. He wins both the election and her hand, and all seems like bliss.

Tasuma is a delightful tribute to the African war veterans who were drafted into the French colonial army to serve on the frontline of the French wars in Indochina and Algeria.

Moussa Sene Absa's epic and sprawling urban tale appropriately opens with a shot of a Senegalese musician, Madiké "Dick" Diop (Lord Alajiman), being escorted in handcuffs by French authorities.

This award-winning African classic is a story of epic and mythical dimensions in which Burkinese director Idrissa Ouedraogo combines the evocative music of Abdullah Ibrahim.

Totor is the name given by Mèntse, the film’s boy-hero, to a tortoise that keeps growing fatter. Totor is the story of an orphan boy who meets his alcoholic father several times without ever speaking to him, and who is finally taken in by pygmies.

Soriba Samb (Oumar Diop Makena) is a Senegalese who has just received a much sought-after internship to study filmmaking in Paris. Soriba goes to the French capital, accompanied by the five-year-old son of a friend whom he believes to be living there.

It is the dawn of Senegal's independence from France, and as Dakar citizens celebrate in the streets we soon become aware that only faces have changed in the handover of power. White money still controls the government.

Living in a small West African village are the boy Bila (Noufou Ouédraogo) and his girl friend Nopoko (Roukietou Barry). Their days are spent on the lush savannah, where they blissfully occupy themselves by fetching water for their parents, playing hide-and-seek and swimming.