Closer To Home - The Restoration of Leighton House Museum

Director: Frederique Cifuentes Morgan

Year: 2011

Frédérique Cifuentes's first documentary film, Cinema in Sudan: Conversation with Gadalla Gubara, builds up a portrait of a great Sudanese film-maker, Gadalla Gubara. He was one of the pioneers of cinema in Africa. Through his oeuvre, Gadalla reveals to us a Sudan both mysterious and misunderstood. Despite censorship and lack of financial support over sixty years, he has produced cinema that is independent and unique in a country where freedom of expression is a rare luxury. The film Conversations with Gadalla Gubara retraces the struggle of a man who received the 2006 Award for Excellence for his career at the Africa Academy Awards, Nigeria. Gadalla was a person with a unique character: a Sudanese of great charm, caustic in his criticism of film-making, a humorist of refinement whose blindness has not tempered the rebel in him. He was, moreover, one of the last great figures of African cinema still with us. He knew the ending of the colonial era, saw the pomp and the disillusion, watched as his country sank into the depths of obscurantism. In 1969, Gadalla and his friends, Ousmane Sembene, Trinté Bassori, Mustapha Alassane came up with a revolutionary idea: FESPACO.

Director: Pauline Blanchet

Year: 2028

How do we remember the past when our history has been faked? One man’s idea to rebuild a capital on the foundations of an unfinished city erased a collective memory, casting a dark shadow over Skopje's future identity.

Director: Mark Forbes

Year: 2025

Filmmaker Mark Forbes exams classism that has plagued the UK film and TV industry for decades, and through the lens of individuals from working-class backgrounds as we observe the challenges they encounter when attempting to enter the field. Official Selection Galway 37th Film Fleadh 2025 - World premiere