Discoveries from Niger World Cinema

Two people from different caste start to fall in love but after their parents not allowing them to stay together, they run away.

A film that revolves around a girl who confronts social taboos of the Chhaupadi tradition, which prohibits Hindu women and girls from participating in normal family activities while menstruating as they are considered “impure”. Set in the seventies, the film’s title refers to Nepal’s Panchayat system of self-rule, which was abolished in 1990.

A team of 20 elite Nepali climbers venture into the Death Zone of Mount Everest to restore their sacred mountain and the contaminated water source of 1.3 billion people. They ascend the highest point on the planet to the 150 bodies of deceased climbers and 100,000 pounds of rubbish that remain on the high slopes of Everest. This is the self-documented story of their life-threatening journey.

How’s the Big Everything? Garba asks Nicole. For them, the “Big Everything” encompasses family, politics, History, daily life, the stars, small things, and time passing like the wind. By delving into their memories, at the time of Niger’s independence, we come face to face with the complexity of the present.

Three Nepalese children rely on each other for survival after they become separated from their parents while entering India.

Appa is a film based on a father son relationship told in the most simplest of manner. It delves into the world of Birkhey (Dayahang Rai) and Sid (Siddhant Raj Tamang) as they explore their relationship. It further deepens into a teenage romance with Kavya (Allona Kabo Lepcha).

A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.

One taxi driver, the other mechanics or masons. They drive a moped as Johnny Halliday and wear pants Zazous. During the weekend, they play in a real western with guns purchased at the supermarket, loaded with blanks. They love violence, their favorite actors are Edward G. Robinson and Glenn Ford. The heroine is selling at the Galerie du Niger. When the Nigerian filmmaker Mustapha Alassane turned the return of an adventurer, the first African western, Serge-Henri Moati wanted to make a film about film. The cowboys are turning black traces and proves at the same time the reality and fiction, film and life, sometimes extremely close, especially when it comes to the Wild West ..

A Nepali romantic film.

A story about the life of a teacher who always preaches his students to be a good person in life.

I'm too busy to take care of my family.

In February 1974, Pam Sambo Zima, the oldest of the priests of possession in Niamey, Niger, died at the age of seventy-plus years. In his backyard, the followers from the possession cult symbolically break the dead priest's ritual vases and cry for the deceased while dividing up the clothes of the divinities.

In an impoverished country, rife with contradiction, a young girl is torn between her obligation to her family and the influence of foreign visitors. Ashmina, 13, lives at the outskirts of Pokhara Nepal. Her home, nestled between a beautiful lake and the Himalayas, happens to be the paragliding capital of the world. Forced to skip school, she helps her family make ends meet by working at the landing field in return for small change.

10-year-old Tashi and his ageing grandma live as tenants to a wealthy family, in a remote mountain village in Darjeeling. Their job is to look after the family’s cardamom orchard and guard it at night from wild animals. An approaching wedding at their patron’s house excites Tashi. But will they invite him?

Back from the US to his village in Niger, a man brings Ameican Western outfits to his close friends, who immediately identify with cowboys. A bloody western begins in the savannah.

1968: Justin Ohounou is the Minister of the Interior Department. He is involved in scheming with a corrupt business man. His goal is to eliminate by all means his political enemy Christian Adegbe and all of the Adegbe Tribe.

An excellent portrayal of a struggle of a common man to do something in our discouraging system and society. Fantastic acting from the cast and well written dialogues

Sijou is a small boy who lives in the village of Saikhonguri, a village in Baksa near the Indo-Bhutan border. He lives with his father. One day, his life takes a drastic shift when he becomes a victim of the Feudal Land Tenure System which was in practice in Bhutan till 1958. Gradually, his life takes drastic turns which eventually turn him into a monk.

In 1990, one sixth of the population of Bhutan was exiled because they demanded greater democratic rights from the ruler. The film follows the story of Sarita, a 13-year-old girl born in Khudunabari, a refugee camp in Nepal where over 100,000 Bhutanese exiles live. Now they will be "relocated": thousands of families will be forced to emigrate and their Lotshampa identity will disappear forever. Sarita and her friends will not tell us their odyssey: they will dance and sing it.

A diminishing water supply is driving people from their land in a remote region of Nepal. The younger generation of the Gurung family adapts by commuting from their ancestral home, where subsistence depends on grazing goats and cows, to a village that has a commercial apple orchard, fed by irrigation. “We cannot give up cultivating our fields,” a elderly man explains. “The apple farm is not going to be able to feed us easily.” The older generation believes that water shortages stem from road building and bulldozing, upsetting the natural order, a young man explains. Both generations fly prayer flags, beseeching water.

Ishwor is a motorbike mechanic in Butwal and lives a simple routine life until he meets a young girl named Manjari. Manjari, daughter of a powerful landlord, falls in love with Ishwor for his simplicity irrespective of their differences. Manjari's dad decides to marry her off with another boy who matches their standard in the society. Manjari is upset by this development and goes to meet Ishwor to inform him about her dad's decision. Manjari forces Ishwor to take her away threatening to kill herself if Ishwor fails to comply. Ishwor agrees with her and takes her to Kathmandu.

Recently returned to her home in the Sultanate of Zinder after completing her degree abroad, a young woman suffering from the pain of a lost love finds renewal while awaiting the mystical promise of a new moon.

Once upon a time, in the middle of the last century, a great warrior named Babatou. Nigerian jumper from the region Dounga Gurunsi invaded the country and settled there. The brave prisoners were integrated into the army, women espoused. For fifty years, the adventurous young people from Niger Babatou went to live in the epic.

In their remote village, haunted by memories, Atimaley and Devi find themselves faced with a dilemma when a dear friend leaves without saying goodbye.

A teacher named Basudev Kattel who is suffering from poverty seeks to his friend named Kumar than he realized Kathmandu is filled of corruption.

Badhshala is a story of torture inside an army barrack during maoist insurgency.

Unemployed youths, many looking to leave the country for want of better options, are swelling the ranks of gangs that sow violence in Zinder, in Niger. Aïcha Macky explores the origins of the radicalization that is spreading through her hometown and the prospects for escaping it.

Vashna lives to make others happy; their happiness is hers. Aakash is an aimless wanderer, with no ambition other than to live happily in the moment. When the two disparate souls meet, both are forced to rethink the meaning of happiness.

A revealing one-shot portrait of two Nepali newlyweds in a moment of rest and playful interaction, Stephanie Spray's Untitled challenges our perception of two themes at the very core of ethnographic filmmaking: human relationships and the ways in which they can be experienced by the viewer. Only fourteen minutes long, Untitled is uncut, rejecting the implications of edited sequences and also purposefully excluding subtitles over the couple's conversation. The style of the film confronts the history of ethnography as a controversial study of the "other" by refusing us any clear messages or meanings behind what is being presented, challenging the viewer to come up with their own answers to any questions that may arise.

About the story of a family facing a medical emergency and the bureaucratic apathy of the medical institution.

A young woman struggles to provide for her son while waiting to receive money from her husband. When she hears that a neighbour’s husband has returned from abroad with gifts, she undertakes the long, humbling journey to visit them, in this lyrical, emotional, and richly textured drama.

An action movie, 'Lakshya' is a presentation of Om Kiran Films. Boxing, dancing and fighting the mafia.

Dharmaa is posted as the DFO of Kaliban after the poachers killed the previous DFO at their post. Dharmaa leaves his wife Gauri at home with his brother Abhaya and sister-in-law, Diya. The poachers and the police in the Kaliban area have teamed up to smuggle timber from the forest.

Based on a traditional folktale, this animated film follows the hero Sambagana, who must complete a succession of arduous trials in order to make a princess laugh and earn her consent to marriage. Combining drawn animation and stop-motion puppetry, the film retells the legend through a stylized, episodic quest narrative.

A young trans woman goes door-to-door campaigning to be elected to parliament in Nepal.

What's wrong with a man dressing up? A movie with action, songs, and romance.

Partially based on true stories, 'Six Strands' is a character study inspired by the world famous Darjeeling tea industry and its undisclosed secrets.

Mailo is my village, where I was born in 1975. I'm Christian, my father is Muslim. Today, I no longer recognize my village, which is divided by religious tensions, with a tarred road as a dividing line: Muslims on one side, Christians on the other. One night in 2009, I received a call from a cousin: "Bawa, get up and pray, your village is in danger of exploding!" The two "camps" were about to clash. So, to get people talking about living together, I returned to the village with a project: to build my house on the Muslim side.

Singing and dancing while calling out "Manjari”

Singing and dancing while calling out "Manjari”

A young Nepali man, preparing to launch a filmmaking career in Europe, is suddenly summoned home to the Everest region. There, his father—a Sherpa livestock farmer—is ailing. In this intimate portrait, the director explores his relationship to his birthplace, parents and the world of tradition and ritual he thought he had left behind.

Contemporary economic conditions in Nepal are examined with documentary images, interviews, and narration. There has been, for many years, a labour migration from across Nepal to India ’s cities. This short film is set in the underground parking lot of an apartment building in Bangalore, in South India. One Way follows the livelihood of a security guard named Shyam Bahadur, who lives with the rest of his family in the electric switching room of an apartment block, to whom he provides service for the sake of survival. The narrative of the journey he made 35 years ago, from the mountains of Nepal to the southern plateau of Bangalore, punctuates his day-to-day life in and out of the basement. As his personal story unfolds, the hills of Nepal are being rocked by “the people’s war,” yet another historical disturbances that has forced Nepalis to emigrate for work.

Agadez, a desert city in northern Niger, is weighed down by geopolitical interests and the harsh European border policy. The filmmaker weaves testimonies of three courageous women who each, in their own way, try to confront this reality. They speak about their work, their role in the community, and how they put solidarity into practice. Their inspiring stories offer a glimpse of a feminism that is not theoretical, but rooted in everyday life—a feminism that is truly practiced and lived.

In the Village of Gorkha We Grow Pure Love

Threads of a lost childhood unravel, as a ten-year-old boy recalls the rural life he led with his parents before political strife forced him to move to the city with his grandparents.

A man and a woman meet in a village, singing and dancing and courting.

Suicide bombers are chosen by chance and their funeral rites accomplish the work of God. On this particular day the envoy of God is twelve -year-old Fatima. She is left in a village market, wearing an explosive belt with ten minutes until she kills the enemies of God. But this is the market where Fatima’s mother works and where she rediscovers life. For ten minutes we accompany her on the nail-biting journey of a martyr from the present to the past. With one minute left on the clock, she faces her mother. Confronted by her own helplessness, will time stop?

In her short film, SAVOIR FAIRE LE LIT, Macky discusses taboos in sexual education and the implications for the relationship of mothers to their daughters.

Serge Moati describes his film as "the saga of the 'children of the roads', builders of the future who "will one day cross countries that will look like gardens", as a lyric-amphigouric dialogue prophesied, declaimed by actors, quite amateurs, crossed all along the dusty tracks..."

The festive citizens of the Kingdom of Frogs crowd into an arena to watch their warriors engage in hand-to-hand combat and to see Tountia and her musicians perform an enchanting concert.

Nepalese youths dance wildly!

Tragic circumstances bring together the wife and the mother of two migrant workers - one from the east, the other from west Nepal.

Poonam, a mother and a wife,facing domestic abuse and martal rape, meets her long time friend on the night of her anniversary. As they engage in a deep cnversation after-party, her husband intervenes.

Monsieur Sim, the president of the Republic of Toads, receives a scoundrel’s welcome from his citizenry after returning from a luxury holiday abroad (disguised as a diplomatic mission).

Let's sing joyfully and happily.

Christine Summers has been working in an NGO in Nepal for the past four years. Her boss assigns her to do a last mission in Ruku to collect information of the life outside of the cities, before she leaves for the United States. Leaving for the mission with her crew and her guide; they take shelter in a small village called Zhigrana; an area known for a killer on the loose who sacrifices humans in the name of Kaal Panchami, a mythical ghost. When they start to turn against each other regarding a death of a friend and with no one to trust: it is now up to Christine to figure out who the killer is. Is it the ghost of Kaal Panchami or is the truth even stranger than that?

Directed by Mustapha Diop.

We miss our mom, who was always so kind to us.

An adventure tale about 11-year-old Khenan, raised in Paris by his French mother and his Nigerian father, Najem. After his mother's death, Khenan is taken by Najem to their Imuhar clan in the Sahara where Khenan learns the traditional rituals of their people from his grandfather Kenuni. During a camel race, Khenan's camel falls and must be killed. Filled with shame, Khenan runs away into the desert, and passing truckdriver Hamou returns him to the camp. Hamou and another clan member are rivals for the affections of attractive Chadema. The French and Tumachek dialogue is backed by Philippe Eidel's world music track, combining multicultural pop with traditional sounds.