Discoveries from Tanzania World Cinema

Since his father is ill, young Fari must help his brother Danford on the fishing boat, although he’s afraid of the deep. Far out on the open sea, neither wants to admit that they might not be up to the task.

Mbwana and his best friend Juma are two young men with big dreams. These dreams become reality when they photograph a gigantic fish leaping out of the sea and their small town blossoms into a tourist hot-spot as a result. But for Mbwana, the reality isn't what he dreamed – and when he meets the fish again, both of them forgotten, ruined and old, he decides only one of them can survive. Jonah is a big fish story about the old and the new, and the links and the distances between them. A visual feast, shot though with humour and warmth, it tells an old story in a completely new way.

A story about a young African man living with his beautiful childhood love interest in a bedroom shack, struggling to find work. He then gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to earn money and have a lifestyle beyond his wildest dreams working for a corrupt organization. This dream lifestyle turns to a nightmare when authorities close in on him to turn in his father-figure boss, and his entire organization while losing all his wealth or risk some serious jail time.

A young woman battles depression as her husband avoids both his and her issues.

Holy, by renowned directors Guy Reid and Simon Rieber, is the life of a young man who choose to live a holy life by lying to achieve his goals but his efforts failed miserably after meeting a girl who made him forget what he intended.

A coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar. Denge, a young freedom fighter meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution escalate.

Mashoto’s life in the city is a hustle. It’s a fast life in the fast city of Dar es Salaam. There’s no time to stop and Mashoto likes it this way. There’s no time to think about the people he left behind in the village. Until silence cuts through the city racket with three words: mother has died. With those words Mashoto’s life changes forever. He returns home, to the place he abandoned, to bury his only ally. Yet his mother has left behind a gift. Her voice, her unseen presence, a gentle whisper urging him to open his eyes and strain his ears- to learn the lessons of nature, of the earth and the roots that draw their nourishment from it. Cast out by his father after losing the little money his mother had left, Mashoto must learn to survive from the land. He must learn to face old enemies and forge new alliances, to fight and to love. Most of all, Mashoto must discover what it is he is fighting for.

In Old Moshi, Tanzania, a head is missing : the skull of Chief Meli, who fought the German colonial occupation of his territory and was executed in response to his resistance in 1900. This animated film, based on archival sources and oral accounts provided by Chief Meli's grandson, sheds light on the racist roots of physical anthropology and ethnological museums.

Four Tanzanian women are unknowingly connected through their ability to persevere extreme hardships in the city of Dar-es-Salaam.

An affluent guy goes to visit his girlfriend home in the ghetto where all kinds of drama ensues. Kiumeni is a Swahili comedy/love story that brings two distinct worlds together; when an affluent guy goes to visit his less privileged girlfriend at her home in the ghetto. Their young love is suddenly overcome with challenges, near-death experiences and hilarious comebacks that put their union to the test

A black and a white woman meets in Dar es Salam because of their men, and starts a friendship, despite their different background.

Day in a life of Tanzanian fishermen

A fearless sea captain, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, sails a ship through loopholes in international law, providing abortions on the high seas, and leaving in her wake a network of emboldened activists who trust women to handle abortion on their own terms.

In a land where the birth of twins is taboo, a king and queen come into conflict with the gods and each other when they have twins of their own.

A woman single-handedly shoulders her family's burdens, without reward or thanks, to farm her husband's land and keep the family fed and cared for. She finds herself training her daughter to walk the same path she does. No school, all work. Pests threaten her harvest and are exterminated using a loan from the local women's Co-op. But when Manyusi squanders her prized harvest and schemes to marry off their daughter, Fatuma must enlist the help of her fellow ladies at the co-op to make things right.

The loss of biodiversity is highly alarming: our planet is currently experiencing the greatest extinction since the age of the dinosaurs. This film documents the extinction of species currently happening around the world. But it also highlights hopeful initiatives as committed men and women on every continent fight to save endangered species and work towards improving biodiversity.

Nicholaus blames his wife Vivian for not conceiving a child, but is unwilling to see a doctor to investigate the cause of their infertility. Meanwhile, Nicholaus' girlfriend Victoria becomes pregnant. He believes that this child is his, but it turns out not to be.

After the passing of her estranged father, Fatima makes an unlikely friend at a hospital, Maria. Bound by pain, Fatima keeps coming back to hear Maria's tale of the T-junction where she found love and loss in a ragtag community.

A young man living in Dar es Salaam meets an old man who takes him in as his son and eventually sends him off to Nigeria to look for his three children. The only link to finding them is a set of negative films and an address. The story is about his adventures in a foreign land and how he finally meets them and reunites them with their father.

Chameleon Corridors is a short film told through the all-seeing eyes of a chameleon. It tells the story of how one community in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania is striving to regenerate one of the world’s most biodiverse forests.

In the distant future, a lone scientist makes a breakthrough discovery, called EONII, that may save the Nation and the Continent. Forces in the shadows begin to surface. Lies, Betrayal, Politics, and War, all to decide one thing, who should control the power of the EONII?

On an island where religion bars women from playing soccer, the Queens resist cultural norms and challenge local assumptions about Islam and gender identity. The film explores the history and character of the team, and the evolving perception of women in sports on the island.

4 young strangers, all war refugees, unite to take on the challenge of summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the seven summits and the highest peak in Africa. They have been brought together by the charity INARA to shed light on the impact of war on children. The mountain always has a lesson, and often not what we think or expect it to be. Not all will make it to the summit, some will be forced to face dormant personal demons. This is a story of physical and emotional adventure, the rollercoaster of life, and the possibilities that emerge when we stand together.

Apostles of Cinema follows Frank, DJ Black, and Rehema — three devoted film workers in Tanzania — as they reintroduce a classic piece of the country’s film history to their audiences of working class cinephiles. We join them, alongside Maangamizi: The Ancient One (2001), on a journey through the labyrinth of informal libraries, studios, and cinemas that exist to keep film and film culture alive. A testament to the profound cultural value of film when made truly accessible.

An African and African American debate on the ongoing diaspora war within the black community. Set entirely across the centuries-old East African Mancala strategy game, Bao, the film fuses historical archive with lived experience to wage a fierce interrogation of Black identity and pride.

Bahasha is the story of Kitasa, an elected public official who betrays his family, friends and community when he takes an easy bribe. He learns the hard way and must now find the road to redemption.

A virgin in a coastal East African town becomes mysteriously pregnant weeks before her wedding, forcing her family to confront faith, tradition, and her right to choose.

A successful married big city pharmacist returns to the village for her sisters wedding only to discover that her first love still pines for her with dire consequences.

Mozizi, a female anthropomorphic character (half Anopheles mosquito, half human) is on a quest to find a new ‘home’ after her breeding grounds have been destroyed by fumigation. She takes us through her day as she trounces through the urban scape of Dar es Salaam with a housing agent.

Footage of Carl and Mary Akeley filmed during the AMNH Eastman-Pomeroy-Akeley East African Expedition, 1926. Short scenes from campsites and wildlife in Nairobi, Uganda, and Tanganyika (now Tanzania)

Tanzania's first feature-length film.

A narcotics cop who moonlights as a heroin addict, finds redemption and a future in a sassy working girl who sees the gentle, loving man within, if only he can escape the darkness that keeps pulling him down.

In corrupt Upanga, French botanist Claiborne seeks a cure for his wife. He clashes with a ruthless leader & forms a fragile alliance with a local woman. As a fearless teen fights oppression, can they unite to heal the land?

A sentimental odyssey about the illusions and prejudices of a European man who goes to live in Zanzibar, told through his letters to his beloved woman, at a time when globalization and mass tourism are shaking up and transforming the tropical island, its people and culture.

Mulasi tells the story of four friends trying to cope with life’s challenges. To help one of them cope with depression, the friends organise a fun-filled trip and travel from Dodoma to Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater.

Juma is a poor fisherman who loves telling tales. Amina is the girl who loves to hear his stories. They long to be together, but Amina's father, Ali, wants a better life for her. Ali thinks that he has found this in Yustus, a rich but self-serving young suitor.Juma must put everything on the line to save their love, but he must sacrifice more than he bargained for in order to succeed.

Every morning, a work-obsessed guy finds a mango on his doorstep. In his investigation to find out who’s been leaving them and why, he uncovers an unexpected wake-up call linked to his childhood.

Suffering from a serious illness, Mariamu and those around her find themselves in conflict with their traditional values.

Start with Maya she marry with man name Nizzo but Nizzo he don't have power to satisfy woman so may start process to get new man to give her pregnant, but.

Set in a busy street of Dar es Salaam, a shoeshine boy offers us a conscious and subconscious perspective of the space and people of his city ranging from the local politician to University students as well as the neighbor tea maker. This short-film is both a social commentary and an artistic depiction of the life, aspirations and perspectives of a working child.

War movie

Tanzanian queer singer Tofa Jaxx in conversation with HIV/Trans activist Aunty Ali, exploring issues of sex work, gender and being out.

In a struggle to get himself and his family out of debt and poverty, Baraka quits school and decides to enter a professional boxing competition to get the money he desperately need. Will he succeed?

A group of extraordinary children, a school lost in the Tanzanian mountains and many legends. How are they intertwined and what might their stories have in common? But above all, where does the courage to blossom in the dark lie?

An area has become alive.

As recently as forty years ago, most sections of the Maasai were semi-nomadic and relatively independent of the nation-state. However, political, social and economic changes in East Africa have forced many herders to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. The Chairman and the Lions introduces Frank Kaipai Ikoyo, a charismatic Ilparakuyo Maasai who, at thirty-three, is the leader of a Tanzanian village called Lesoit. Ikoyo was elected to his post at the age of twenty-six in part because he had completed primary school. That someone so young would be accorded such authority would have been without precedent not long ago. Yet this ethnography of Ikoyo's duties as village chairman shows how literacy and insight into the workings of the nation-state are essential for Maasai to combat the many lions, both real and figurative, that beset them: land grabbers, "bush" lawyers, unemployment, out-migration and poverty.

After apocalypse, a chief aims to seek for a cure for a virus which killed plenty of people so as to take over by capturing and use them for testing, one of the captives' daughter takes a quest to look for and rescue her father from hands of the brutal gang led by a warrior who is promised wealth and marriage with chief's niece.

Journalist Tama and ghost hunter Zabron investigate a series of deaths at a house that is believed to be inhabited by a vengeful spirit.

Abel returns home after graduating and working in the US for 10 years and joins the Tanzanian corporate world where his ethics and morals are tested, and forced to make choices about the person he wants to become.

Following the everyday life of 21-year-old Samira from Zanzibar for 7 years, NDOTO YA SAMIRA depicts the quiet victories of a determined young woman.

This film follows John Kitime, a Tanzanian musician now in his 60s, as he sets out on a mission to put together an all-star band from the old days to revive the classic sound of Zilipendwa music. Along the way, he meets the people who played key roles in the music scene of Tanzania during the struggle for independence and the nation's formative years under the first president, Julius K. Nyerere. As Kitime plays with the band, spends time with musicians and digitizes reel-to-reel tapes from the 1960s and '70s, he reveals a fascinating and little-known story about the power of music to bring together a people and a nation.

Rehema, the daughter of a rich businessman Adam Mbena is kidnapped by an infamous gang of criminals. Adam is extorted and has only 24 hours to pay a ransom or lose his only beloved daughter. Adam seeks help from Faith Komba, a detective officer and her squad of three young agents Paul, Baraka and Santos to rescue Rehema as soon as possible. Nyara is the debut feature film from Wanene Entertainment, and is set to release in cinemas all over Tanzania on the 30th of December.

A day in the life of Mozambican women refugees working in a quarry outside Dar es Salaam.

John Mbano and Cesilia Mollel are on a mission to bring the stolen remains of their ancestor back home to Tanzania. A story about loved ones kept in German museums, the power of institutions, generational trauma and resilience.

In a rural Maasai village in Tanzania, a primary school girl is suddenly confronted by an arranged marriage.

There are so many ways to travel, to explore the unknown. Here, rather than a tourist trail, we’ll follow a look, a smile, a wave of a hand, snippets of music or the curve of a wave...

The film explores the rural life and feelings of the Iteso people of Kenya. The African sense of community is experienced through their daily activities ranging from farming to storytelling. The film portrays the Iteso’s spirit of sharing and reciprocal giving, values which contribute to the unity and survival of communities in Africa. The film is narrated by members of the Iteso community.

A documentary exploring how educational initiatives are empowering Maasai women and girls in Tanzania, revealing their resilience, hopes, and the challenges they face in a rapidly changing world.