Discoveries from Niger World Cinema

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.

In Zinder, the 2nd largest city in Niger, Ousseini is the young chief of the very traditional Brotherhood of Butchers. While trying to develop a channel for exporting beef from his region, he faces another challenge; he must legitimize his recently acquired role as a traditional chief while at the same time asserting his role as an innovator. The director follows the young Ousseini in his efforts. His movie summarizes the problems faced by young entrepreneurs, and provides a lesson in practical economics.

While separating peanuts from their shells, the women in a collective in Agadez, Niger, talk to each other about the men passing by and the filmmaker being present. Focusing on their working hands, the camera reveals the harsh conditions of these women’s daily lives.

Singing of sorrow when a loved one falls ill

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).

In a Nigerien village there lived a poor family who found it difficult to provide for daily needs and above all to overcome hunger. This village located several kilometers from the school will not allow the children to go to class on time and to follow the lessons in the same way as the other students. In this atmosphere of daily misery, the corrupt power pays very little attention to the problems of grassroots populations and community social services are almost absent. Because of a cursed sum demanded from school by the teacher, the young girl can no longer go to school. On the other side nothing was possible to save their eldest daughter beaten to death by her husband, because they don't have enough to pay for the doctor's prescription. With sincerity and directness, this portrait of a needy family criticizes all the consequences of a badly managed country.

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.

After the painful ordeal of female genital mutilation, Mariama will then bear the traumatic weight of a rape and an unwanted pregnancy that will lead to her banishment from the village, then to her "exile" in Maradi, where she will be sentenced to 20 years in prison for having killed, in a reflex, certainly linked to the trauma of the rape she suffered, a man who solicited her for prostitution. Fearing to denounce her rapist, the young girl walls herself in silence, and will speak only just after the childbirth, on the brink of death, to entrust to a couple her baby and a loincloth on which she took care to write her life story for her daughter.

A haunting visual fever dream, and a meditation on the afterlife; the journey to the next world, and what gets left behind among the living.

Though a legal recognition of a third gender ranks Nepal as a leader in transgender rights, the reality of transforming from son to daughter is fraught with obstacles. Despite this, Meghna Lama has a dauntless attitude and spirited laugh - both a powerful reminder of not only what it is to be transgender in Nepal, but ultimately, what it is to be human.

The Whole Timers is an upcoming Nepali movie based on the decade long civil war in Nepal. It is told from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy who joins the Maoist revolution in the hope that a gun will help him find his missing father. But he discovers something much more powerful in the cameras carried by members of his platoon who are documenting the war.

The debut song sung by Sachin Pariyar, a genius child actor. More than 13 million views on YouTube.

The Story might be fiction but the place, incident, time and circumstances are very close to reality. The Native People who were have been living in harmony and peace in various places of Nepal since the ancient period. These native peoples are being enticed and displaced away from their native land by some groups with strategic planning. The story has tried to depict partial examples of such places. And we are very sorry for any inconvenience caused by it.

This documentary explores the upbringing of transgender model Anjali, in a small village in the hilly district of Nuwakot, a district neighboring capital city Kathmandu, the discrimination she faced, the struggle she did after coming to Kathmandu and also about her dreams and hopes about the future.

Inspired by the Women of Nepal

An elderly fisherman, meditating on past memories and rituals at the end of his life, is visited by a young, familar-faced boy who just wants to play.

Filmed over seven years, Drawing The Tiger is a intimate portrait of a family in rural Nepal who get a chance to break their cycle of poverty: Their brightest child is awarded a scholarship to attend school in the city. When she doesn't return home, the family is forced to survive without her or the opportunity they believed would change their fate.

In Niger, young woman takes up an apprenticeship hoping to become a motorcycle mechanic.

After a marital quarrel at home, the husband is seriously injured in a car accident, and the wife grieves.

The Himalayan region of Nepal is one of the most fragile environments in the world and is characterized by extreme uncertainty and great complexity. The adverse impacts of climate change are further worsening the situation of local system/societies by increasing their vulnerability. Through a visual representation of how some communities from Lo Mustang region of Nepal perceive climate change, this film explores their cultural models and their attempts at adaptation, both individual and collective.

The film is about how a virtual relationship through cell phone can influence a remote village and it's people and thereby brings forth a change which challenges the age old village set up, leading to a chaotic and humorous aftermath.

The plot traces the historical narrative of Shankhadhar paying off the debt of all the residents of Kathmandu Valley, and thus beginning the calendar which began with the “year all debts were paid,” as Nepal Sambat has been cited as in historical documents.

This is the story of 28-year-old Ram, who migrates to work in a Nepali restaurant in northern Japan. The film explores his daily life in Japan and that of his family back home, reflecting on the socio-cultural challenges created by globalisation. Having escaped his home village, for 12 years Ram worked at restaurants in Kathmandu, but his family’s poverty remained constant.