The world has never been more interconnected than it is today, but some routes have been traversed for centuries, and are deeply imbued with something that cannot transmit across fiberoptic cables: centuries of complex living history. This Pathway explores the currents and tides that carry activity, lives, and resources across the frontier of the African and European continents—currents that have been canalized in modern times by colonial and postcolonial relations of power and movement. Here we present a selection of works that immerse us in the contemporary personal realities of people whose lives straddle these worlds in various ways, drawn across lands by forces of history, economics, and sometimes, love.
Films in this Pathway
Delphine, now 30, tells the story of her life, which has been marked by sexual violence, starting when she was raped at the age of 13 and became pregnant. Intense and impressive testimony from a Cameroonian woman living in Belgium.
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At the southern edge of the Sahara, two brave teenage girls from Burkina Faso arrive at a stopping place for migrants on their way to Europe. Their dreams clash with the shocking stories of those who went before them and failed.
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As the granddaughter of Jewish Arabs from Tunisia and Algeria, filmmaker Cléo Cohen is on a quest for her own identity. She looks to her grandparents for answers in this intimate and personal debut film.
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A grandson of colonists in the Belgian Congo wants to know what life there was really like—behind the photos, letters, and films of his grandparents. As it turns out, this is a hopeless task. Silence and looking the other way were the essence of colonial life.
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“Who were we before we were discovered?” wonders filmmaker Natyvel Pontalier aloud. After centuries of colonization, the time has come to rediscover the culture of her Gabonese forebears.
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The Atlantic Ocean has affected countless lives. The makers of this online voyage of discovery take water as a dynamic source of inspiration to explore new ways of archiving, making maps, and sharing knowledge.
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A lively assemblage of fiction, animation, and YouTube videos about imperialism and the diffuse South African identity, in which five film students in Johannesburg examine their personal relationship with the national anthem.
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Faith, hope and harsh reality: Taamaden is an original story about the everyday lives of West African immigrants and their ties with mystical and religious fortune tellers—African occultism reaches to Europe via the smartphone.
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This VR film contrasts the depleted coal mines of the Ruhr region in Germany, which are now filling with water, with active coltan mines in DR Congo, revealing humanity’s ruthless exploitation of both the Earth and itself.
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A failed marriage, a return migration from Nigeria to Denmark, a husband with two families on two continents. Home videos, letter excerpts, and interviews tell the layered story of filmmaker Jide Tom Akinleminu’s mother.
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Mbaye Sow works as a courier between his two home countries, Portugal and Senegal. In a station wagon packed with goods, he drives the thousands of miles up and down, tinkering with his dilapidated car and checking in with home.
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