Cinema Archives

North African Women Wore the Future First

When Jacqueline West, the costume designer behind the Dune series, began creating Lady Jessica Atreides’s wardrobe, she drew from a striking mix of historical and cultural references. Her designs combined medieval European religious imagery with Middle Eastern and North African dress, making Jessica appear at once regal, mysterious and otherworldly. This borrowing is not unique […]

In Côte d’Ivoire, a New Generation Learns to Read the Waves

A surfer in Côte d’Ivoire in a still from The Rising Dawn. Courtesy of Surf Côte d’Ivoire.

Along the Ivorian coastline, the ocean has never been a playground. It feeds families, holds spirits and commands a caution passed down through generations. For most of the country’s history, almost nobody looked at those waves and imagined riding them. The Rising Dawn, a feature documentary by Ivorian filmmakers Nadi Saddy and Nuits Balnéaires, is […]

What the BBC’s Documentary Left Out About the Nigerian Civil War

Easterners demanding Biafra.

On 1 June 2026, the BBC released a documentary on the Nigerian civil war titled Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, an exploration of the 30-month war fought from July 1967 to January 1970, following the declaration of independence by the secessionist state of Biafra in the eastern part of Nigeria. This secession […]

Who Trains the Machines That See Africa?

The Sovereign Stack
As AI becomes the infrastructure beneath culture, African creators can no longer

The Image Belongs to Us

There’s a moment early in My Father’s Shadow where Lagos doesn’t announce itself. It just… is. A street. The quality of afternoon light on a wall you’ve definitely seen before. Children doing the specific nothing that children do in cities that haven’t been built for spectacle. I was in Cannes when I first saw it […]