Acclaimed Movies to be Featured at Annual Tuscaloosa Film Festival

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The 10th annual Tuscaloosa Africana Film Festival, co-sponsored by The University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences, will be held virtually Feb. 19-20.

Six acclaimed movies from the African continent and the broader African Diaspora will be screened during the festival. Participants can join via their own devices by logging on any time during the festival from 2 p.m. Feb. 19 to 9 p.m. Feb. 20.

The film festival is presented by the Edward A. Ulzen Memorial Foundation and Afram South Inc., two nonprofit organizations that support education and public health initiatives in Ghana, West Africa, and West Alabama, respectively. The event is co-sponsored by CCHS and the Tuscaloosa Sister Cities Commission. Tuscaloosa is a sister city of Sunyani-Techiman in Ghana.

Tickets for the film festival are $10 for general admission and are available online.

Programming for the film festival includes “Quilombo,” a classic 1984 drama about Africans enslaved in Brazil who revolt in 1650 and escape from their sugar plantation to the jungle, where they join other runaways. They carve out a place to live, repelling attempts by their Portuguese enslavers to recapture them.

The second feature is “100 Years from Mississippi,” a film about the life of Mamie Lang Kirkland that was released in 2021. Kirkland, a 111-year-old African American woman, survived racial terrorism, segregation, bigotry and bias but continues to have hope, joy and love of life, and the certainty that people can do better. Kirkland left Mississippi when she was 11 years old and while she vowed never to return, she allows her youngest child, filmmaker Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, to take her back to Ellisville. In the film, she tells her story, honors those who succumbed to the terror of racial violence and gives testimony to the courage and hope epitomized by many of her generation.

The third film is “Mrs. F.” The movie’s namesake lives in Makoko, the largest slum on the water in Nigeria, and she sets out to unite women by highlighting gender inequality. Her hope is to lead women out of oppression, convince them to speak up and encourage them to connect. But first Mrs. F. must overcome the gatekeepers of patriarchy and religion.

The fourth feature is “Appreciation,” a 2019 film that follows an African pastor in London as she experiences a life-changing event and begins to question her beliefs.

The fifth film is the 2021 “Back of the Moon” about a powerful gang leader in a Johannesburg, South Africa, ghetto who decides to fight for his home rather than face police relocation. But then fate thrusts a beautiful singer, whom he has loved from a distance, into his orbit.

The final movie, “A Taste of our Land,” is a debut feature from Rwandan director Yuhi Amuli set in an unnamed African country against the backdrop of rising Chinese influence on the continent. The film won Best Feature at the 2020 African Movie Academy Awards and Best First Feature Narrative at the 2020 PanAfrican Film Festival.

For more information about the Tuscaloosa Africana Film Festival, contact Bill Foster at 334-322-0824 or Thad Ulzen at 205-561-7000.

Tuscaloosa Africana Film Festival website

Contact:
Bill Foster, 334-322-0824
Thad Ulzen, 205-561-7000