Discoveries from Angola World Cinema

Two brothers — one a narcotics agent and the other a general — finally discover the identity of the drug lord who murdered their parents decades ago. They may kill each other before capturing the bad guys.

Haunted by questions of disappearance, loss, and revolutionary struggle, An Impossible Address continues Sanzgiri’s examination of the life of Sita Valles and the bonds of solidarity that developed between India and Africa against the Portuguese empire. Combining 16 mm film with digital animation, hand processing, and 3D scanning, the film is a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant experimental personal essay shot across Angola, Goa, and Portugal.

Domingos is a member of an African liberation movement, arrested by the Portuguese secret police, after bloody events in Angola. His wife goes from a prison station to another, trying in vain to find out where he is.

In the 17th century a warrior woman fights for the independence of Angola. After witnessing the murder of her son and watching her people being humiliated by Portuguese colonizers, Njinga will become a Queen and struggle for their liberation embodying the motto: those who stay fight to win.

In 1974, after years of civil war, the Portuguese and their descendants fled the colony of Angola where groups working for independence gradually claim their territory back. A tribal girl discovers love and death when her path crosses that of a young Portuguese soldier. Meanwhile, another group of Portuguese soldiers is barracked inside an infinite wall from which they will have to escape once the past comes out of the grave to claim its long-awaited justice.

"CATANAS POINT - A Surf Documentary" portrays the reality of the sport of surfing in Angola and compares it with what surfing was like in Brazil from the 1980s to the present day.

A group of children, fleeing the war, is taken to Luanda accompanied by a nun. When they reach the aeroplane, 12-year-old N'Dala decides to leave the group and to reconnoitre the city. The nun then starts her unceasing quest for the missing boy. N'Dala, only carrying a textile bag and a doll made of wire, walks through the busy streets filled with people and traffic. Later he finds the tranquility of the island off the coast, where he meets the old fisherman Antonio, with whom he becomes friends. Not much later, he meets the lively, whimsical Zé, who is a little older than he is. N'Dala starts to experience the city and its inhabitants as increasingly forbidding and he would most like to return to the countryside from whence he came. Then he meets Joka, a fringe figure who persuades him to help with a robbery in exchange for money. With this film, Maria Joao Ganga wanted to provide a realistic sketch of the bitter political situation in Angola. One of her most important motivations ...

X, a young man navigating the intensity of life in Luanda — a city that mirrors the energy and contradictions of many African megacities. Alongside his siblings, Lele and Maria, he takes refuge in art, wrestles with faith, and draws strength from the bond of brotherhood. Together, they find release in the underground — from poetry slams to clandestine clubs — where words become weapons of resilience.

The story of King and Talibam, two poor and unemployedbrothers from Luanda who, wanting to change their lives, decide to become robbers.

Set in the area surrounding the Angolan capital of Luanda, 'Liberdade' follows a young couple, Betty a seductive but domineering Chinese immigrant and Liberdade, a troubled young Angolan. When Betty tries to take the relationship to the next level Liberdade must go beyond his physical and psychological limits.

As the summer of 1980 ends, 16 and 17 year old sisters Maria and Alda flee to Lisbon from Angola?s civil war. In the hands of fate, they must learn to live without money in a foreign city. On the edge of the law, the two have to grow up and become women. When the problems are already overwhelming, news comes that makes them unbearable. This blow, however, will give them the push to decide their futures: Alda is going to France and Maria back to Angola in search of her roots.

An ex-boxer who is pursued by professional criminals, tries to take refuge in a Caribbean town with his girlfriend and his disciple. Story loosely inspired on "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway.

Guinea-Bissau, 1969. A violent war between the Portuguese colonial army and the guerrillas of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea. Nome leaves his village and joins the maquis. After years, he will return as a hero, but joy will soon give way to bitterness and cynicism.

Father and son are in a long journey to the city. The road they are on is not on any map. It doesn't end.

One day, air conditioners in the Angolan capital Luanda start to mysteriously fall from buildings. When security guard Matacedo is told to get his overheating boss an air conditioning unit by the end of the day, he embarks on a mission that brings him into contact with the eccentric owner of an electronics store.

In 2015, a group of Angolan artists decided to occupy the spaces of the vacant Globo Hotel in downtown Luanda and transform them into unique exhibition spaces. The multidisciplinary art event “Fuckin’ Globo” categorically rejected funding or institutional support: This radical stance led to a free-spirited approach to cultural, social, and political themes, featuring works created specifically for this event and these spaces. Kamy Lara’s documentary underscores the significance of the project, which celebrates creativity and artistic independence made possible by this collectively initiated intervention. A celebration of innovation and freedom in the heart of Luanda.

The daily life of Luanda's orphans, the child soldiers who took part in Angola's war of independence. Now that their country has been liberated, they work in the sugar cane and palm oil factories. Lopes, aged 10, forms an orchestra and sings A luta continua, the rallying cry that also covers the painted walls of Luanda.

Driver Gil (Gilmário Vemba) has a large debt incurred in the loan sharking market. In the middle of a shootout, in which his car is hit by a group of mercenaries, Gil ends up with a briefcase containing incriminating documents and a lot of cash. With the money, he can either pay off the loan sharks who are after him or deliver the briefcase to its owner, who, coincidentally, is the head of a gang. With the help of his family and friends, he will have to create a plan to solve his debt and save his own life, but with gangsters in the middle of the game, everything becomes even more dangerous.

When Matias goes to deliver his dowry to his fiance's father, an unexpected accident makes him realize how much he is willing to fight for her love.

Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida, whose war name was "Langidila," was one of the great Heroines who sacrificed her entire life for Angola. History is quick to highlight her deeds.

The history and myth of a ghost island off the SW African coast are told through a dystopian parable, in which a character undergoes brainwashing to escape the burden of memory in a world he no longer relates to.

Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it’s time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism, and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting, and the exploitation of man by man.

Enoch is born dazed from a bathtub in a workshop of automobiles, and gets lost in the streets in search of a heart.

Uíge, Angola. Inside a Portuguese catholic seminar, different forms of silence are experienced. A place inhabited by multiple sonorities and images that wander from nature and meditation to colonial impressions.

Five dancers explore the concepts of tradition, culture, memory, and identity, questioning the transformation and deconstruction of these themes in their own lives.

An Afro-Portuguese pair navigates through the ropes of their unresolved love affair and their Black Portuguese identity.

When a chinese merchant brings to a neighbourhood of Luanda a peculiar holy plastic figure of Our Lady, a mourning mother will seek peace, a committed barber starts a new cult and a stray kid will look for revenge for his lost friend.

The Angolan Civil War still casts its shadow across the life of a young widow. The camera wanders through the rooms in her house, recording everyday objects and activities, while she describes how the war entered the family in a poetic monologue.

Vissolela is the young daughter of a successful family; she falls in love with Nelson, a struggling young orphan. Although they belong to opposite worlds, Vissolela still believes that love overcomes all barriers.

The Sun Still Shines is a documentary that presents a slice of the life of people who question their future when their only recourse is food aid. It tells of war and landmines and the United Nations intervention in Angola. The film is the Angolan episode of the serial “Under the United Nations,” produced by La Sept Arte Television to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

In Texas, sibling rivalry goes bone deep when a pair of brothers inherit a morbid antique store. What starts as bitterness and resentment soon turns deadly.

It is a monochromatic experimental film that uses the language of colors to represent a powerful cycle of problematic situations in Luanda through the dreams of Dizon, who navigates between reality, delusions and hallucinations about the city where he was born and raised.

During the production of his album “Sobre Crianças, Quadris, Pesadelos e Lições de Casa”, rapper and activist Emicida visited several communities to create an overview of the reality of young people who live outside the standards of the upper classes.

Portrait of the children born while the war was still going on and members of the Pioneers, MPLA’s youth organisation. As the title predicts, the film is made at a time when, in the aftermath of the Independence War, there’s hope in the future of Angola and the revolution.

After sharing with his best friend his suspicion that his own wife is cheating on him, a young man calls back hours later to dismiss his own account. But he can't know what his friend knows. "Uma Noite Perfeita Para Falar de Amor" (A Perfect Night to Talk about Love) is a bittersweet comedy about love and betrayal loosely inspired in a short story by J.D. Salinger.

After accepting a mysterious box to deliver, a young man crosses the city feeling watched until he reaches the final destination and the mission becomes something far more than just a delivery.

A being that has only bodily existence, an object used to satisfy needs and desires. On the screen, Lúcia preserves only a distant look that hides screams, fears and explosions. She is always ostracized and silenced by the sexist society that at no time considers her opinion and desires. Lucia is the woman's silent report associated with a role or function without the right to be, to think or to express opinions.

Two meetings in 1978 with Kimbanda Kambia, a traditional healer in rural southern Angola. Kimbanda shows the place where he treats and prepares medicines, the women who help him with these preparations, and talks about his practice - how he treats cases of madness, epilepsy, spirit and witchcraft possession.

1978 Angolan documentary.

1978 Angolan documentary

Man Ré dreams of traveling to outer space... but what if this actually happens? In 2017, Angola launched its first satellite into space... and lost it. The film revives this dream. An indie musical film written by and starring Isis Hembe, one of Angola's most renowned urban artists...

50 Kwanzas follows Tchicolassonhi, a ‘Zungueira’ (in Angola, the term for female street vendors), in her daily struggle for better conditions for herself and her family. It is an almost endless journey in pursuit of the '50 Kz', one of the lowest-value and most widely circulated coins in Angola (around €0.4), which may mean little to many, but bring color to the life of a Zungueira.

Humberto Paulo is a brave young Angolan and survivor of several wars, including the Angolan armed conflict and polio. After his adolescence he emigrated to Portugal and continued his studies and basketball career for people with disabilities. Now graduated and with a beautiful family, he is leaving several examples of overcoming.

A man on his quest for free drinks tells the story of a local girls search for vengeance