11st Zanzibar International Film Festival

Located on Zanzibar Island in Stone Town, a World Heritage site, this year’s festival improved on itself as East Africa’s largest cultural event. The festival concentrates on films that have been made in Africa (mostly Black Africa) and how countries in the Indian Ocean region are affected by their global diasporas.

The theme of this year’s festival was Cultural Crossroads. The festival presented a variety of recent production from the region in almost all kinds of filmmaking: feature films, documentaries, shorts and animations. The FIPRESCI prize was chosen from just the feature films section. In competition were 16 films, among them productions from leading African filmmaking countries including Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal. For the final decision on the prize, the FIPRESCI jury selected three films: The Kadogo Brothers by Joseph Muganga, the Ivory Coast production Ezra by Newton I. Aduaka, and the Nigerian-French co-production Tartina City by director Issa Serge Coelo from Chad.