The vitality of the African city has provided local filmmakers with a rich array of stories for their films. African Metropolis presents six short films that examine the complexity of urban life in Abidjan, Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi. They run the gamut of genres, but in all the central character is the city itself. A Jewish pensioner lives alone in a Johannesburg apartment, the last resident of an ever-changing city. In a Nairobi of the future, one man searches for the girl of his dreams. Dakar is the backdrop to an intimate conversation between two women. Abidjan once played host to the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. In Cairo a musician sees the gap between rich and poor expand. And a final film confronts the perils of the poverty trap.

A documentary film on the struggle of a smallest tribe in Namibia fighting for the return of the skulls of their people taken by the Germans for racial science profiling after the genocide of 1904. It also demands the finding of these tests. This is while this tribe is launching a case to seek reparation from Germany. This is a story of the ordinary grassroots group taking on the mighty and powerful against all odds.

South African Vincent Moloi’s Berea is a compelling drama about the anxiety of an elderly gentleman disoriented by the radical urbanization of his neighbourhood.

South African Vincent Moloi’s Berea is a compelling drama about the anxiety of an elderly gentleman disoriented by the radical urbanization of his neighbourhood.

Dez and Terri, a mixed-race couple married 20 years and adoptive parents, they are the trailblazing lesbians of the New South Africa. But, have these freedoms guaranteed them happiness? Asanda, their 18 year old adopted daughter, is the poster child for South Africa’s diversity but describes herself as “an experiment”, being made up as she goes along. She meets Shado, an enigmatic Tommy Boy from Khayalitsha, a township on the edge of Cape Town, and a different picture of the New South Africa emerges.