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“Bergman Island” (The Criterion Collection): Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s seventh feature is graceful and complex, a story about stories and the sometimes fragile connections between partners and friends. A couple travel to Fårö, Sweden, where Ingmar Bergman lived and worked, in order to work on their own respective filmmaking projects. There they discover more about themselves than they anticipated. The Blu-ray includes an essay from critic Devika Girish; a short film, “Bergman’s Ghosts,” made during production by actor Gabe Klinger; and interviews with Krieps and Hansen-Løve.

Also available:

“Black Adam” (Warner Bros): Dwayne Johnson is the DC Comics anti-hero, freed from his tomb after 5000 years, now ready to deliver his own version of justice.

“Bones and All” (Warner Bros): The latest from “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino is a romantic horror film about cannibals in love — it’s as divisive...

Mary Twala gives an intimate yet epic performance as an 80-year-old widow fighting plans for a dam that will obliterate her village in Lesotho

This is an extraordinary and otherworldly feature film from the tiny landlocked kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. It is the tale of a rebel spirit: an elderly woman who opposes government plans to flood her village, making way for a dam. It’s a film about resistance and resilience, but director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is coolly unsentimental and realistic about the inevitable march of capitalism and construction. Weaving in ideas around displacement, collective identity and history, this film takes on almost mythic qualities.

Related: From Beyoncé to the Oscars: Mary Twala, Africa's queen of cinema...

When observing global cultural differences, some of the most telling points of distinction are seen in how different societies treat death. Beyond this, the ongoing 2020 pandemic has resensitized us, especially in the west, to an earlier way of life not seen since the two world wars and the emergence of modern medicine, where the specter of death looms larger.

A certain mode of arthouse film is well-equipped to process these ideas. The deeply referential new South African film This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection strongly evokes Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, perhaps cinema’s greatest contemplation of the subject. Both concern a central character seeking a dignified end, with the notion of a burial especially symbolic to the ultimate sense of finality. The interesting distinction is that in this film, for its setting in the tiny Lesotho village of Nasaratha, the town’s gravesite actually makes up...

The late South African actor was introduced to a whole new audience in Beyoncé’s Black Is King. But it’s her final film – This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection – that could be her best work

Mary Twala died just a few weeks before Beyoncé’s Black Is King came out. In the film, the 80-year-old embodied the story’s shaman figure, the last part she’d ever play in a six-decade career. The deep lines of her face, white paint over her eyes and red beads covering her head, made a striking impression, introducing the actor to a whole new audience.

Among its other virtues, Black Is King opened a portal for western audiences to some of the best talent from the continent – some emerging, others, like Twala, already well established. But for those only just discovering her in the wake of Beyoncé’s visual album release,...

News on the march…! Held over the weekend, in Yenegoa, Bayelsa State (Nigeria) on Saturday, March 26, 2011, the celebration announcing the winners of the 2011 African Movie Academy Awards (Amaa) – in just its 7th year.

This year’s nominations list boasted an even longer list of awards, compared to previous years, as the award ceremony continues to grow.

Viva Riva, a film I’ve touted on this website in recent days, after seeing it for the first time last week, rightfully dominated, winning 6 trophies, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design.

The rest of the story follows in the table below, lifted from the Amaa’s website Here:

Category

Nominated Films

Winners

Best Short Film Bougfen – Petra Baninla Sunjo (Cameroun)

Weakness – Wanjiru Kairu (Kenya)

No Jersey No Match – Daniel Ademinokan (Nigeria)

Duty – Mak Kusare (Nigeria)

Bomlambo – Zwelesizwe Ntuli (South Africa)

Zebu And...

Over the weekend, as most of us were reveling in Academy Awards thrills and chills, the nominations for another major movie award ceremony were announced, many miles, across the Atlantic Ocean; I’m referring to the 7-year old (this year) Africa Movie Academy Awards (Amaa), which will be held in Yenegoa, Bayelsa State (Nigeria) on Saturday, March 26, 2011.

This year’s nominations list boasts an even longer list of awards, compared to previous years, as the award ceremony continues to grow.

I’ll have to thoroughly scrub this list to highlight as many titles as I can – especially in the feature film categories, and I’ll do that with individual posts over the next week, or so. In the meantime, however, I’ll quickly point out those few titles that we’ve previously given ink to on this website, that are nominated for Amaa awards, including the following: in the Best Diaspora Feature,...