Codename: Angola

Langidila: diary of an exile without return

Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida, whose war name was "Langidila," was one of the great Heroines who sacrificed her entire life for Angola. History is quick to highlight her deeds.

Tales of Luanda: Hope the Pitanga Cherries Grow

Angola: thirty years of independence, three years of peace. Capital, Luanda, a city built for 600 thousand people where four million now live. Ten characters guide us through different ways of living and interpreting the city. People from all of the country's provinces meet at this crossroads. They are the life of the city, transforming it by inventing ways to make money and reinventing themselves.

Angola: Saudades from the One Who Loves You

The film sheds light on a country in which, after twenty-seven years of war and three ­years of official peace, there is an overwhelming discrepancy between poor and rich. A sensitive and respectful approach towards a traumatised society.

Otelina e Lutoy

Otelinda and Lutoy, married for almost 50 years, are reminded of the moments of greatest tension they experienced, in the Angolan civil war, when confronted with the images on the news about the war in Ukraine. Narrated by Otelinda, her story, we learn her story from the 25th of April, until the day she waited alone for her husband on the verge of misfortune, in Cabinda. Her narration is accompanied by the contrasting images of their daily lives in 2023, as well as the landscapes and people of the country where they now reside. Their relationship initially appears distant, but becomes closer towards the end of the narrative, through the memories of everything they suffered together.

Tiger Bay

The history and myth of a ghost island off the SW African coast are told through a dystopian parable, in which a character undergoes brainwashing to escape the burden of memory in a world he no longer relates to.

People of Angola

An anthropological film of the people of Angola.

Rostov-Luanda

Sissako visits a war-torn Angola after thirty years of war in search of a friend and thereby through interviews reflects on the lost utopias of a generation of Africans who experienced the liberation struggles. His camera is witness to the dislocation and despair of those he encounters living in Angola, however he also discovers the resilient spirit of Africa and optimism for its future in unexpected ways.

Blood Diamonds

Blood Diamonds is a made-for-TV documentary series, originally broadcast on the History Channel, that looks into the trade of diamonds which fund rebellions and wars in many African nations. The program focuses primarily on two nations: Sierra Leone and Angola. Diamonds which are traded for this purpose are known as blood diamonds.

Afripedia - Angola

While the center of Angola's capital Luanda is now ranked as one of the most expensive places in the world, the majority of the city's population lives in abject poverty. But young people are rebelling and creating their own counterculture with their own music styles and acrobatic dances, using the "ghetto" as a trademark to define their style.

A proposito dell'Angola

Scarpette bianche

RAI documentary filmed in 1996 about Angola, whose people, after more than ten years of anti-colonial struggle and twenty of civil war, still suffer due to the amount of active landmines scattered all over the country.

Ghost Elephants

In Angola's mist-shrouded highlands, three KhoiSan master trackers embark on a spiritual quest to rediscover the legendary "ghost elephants" of Lisima, creatures presumed lost but remembered in ancestral trance, ritual, and memory.

NBC White Paper: Angola – Journey to a War

An investigative documentary on the Angolan conflict, filmed on location in Portuguese-controlled Africa by Robert M. Young and first broadcast in 1961. (Note: Originally broadcast as an episode of NBC’s White Paper series (1961), but listed separately due to its independent documentary production, hazardous field filming, major journalistic impact, and sustained scholarly treatment as a standalone documentary work.)

Escape from Luanda

In Luanda, one of the world's poorest and most dangerous places, three students from Angola's only music school work towards their end-of-year concert. The Music School is Angola's first and only school of its kind. It houses some 80 students, most of them desperately poor. Many face disapproval and outright rejection from their families who can't see a future in music. This film asks if, despite the ravages of 27 years of civil war, musical passion can overcome terrible hardships.

Racismo: Uma Descolonização Em Curso

Feast of the Sacred Ox

Scenes from the three last days of the festival in which the population of the old Kingdom of Jau participate yearly.

Letters to Angola

Brazil and Angola while on either side of the Atlantic Ocean have the same language, a common colonial past and many shared stories. In this film, correspondence is exchanged between these two places – some people are longtime friends, others have never met. Their stories intertwine and tell about migration, nostalgia, belonging, war, prejudice, exile and distance. The search for identity and flow of memory are driven by the line of affection that binds the seven pairs of speakers presented in this documentary, people whose life stories are traced between Brazil, Angola and Portugal.

Há Sempre Alguém Que Te Ama

Filmed immediately after the end of the civil war in Angola, Há Sempre Alguém Que Te Ama records the return of Pocas Pascoal to the country where she was born, in an attempt to reconstruct the episode that, in 1975, led to the capture of the director along with her mother and sisters. An intimate documentary about memory and self-(re)construction.

Death Metal Angola

Following nearly 40 years of unrelenting war, peace and reconstruction are slowly arriving to Angola. Huambo, Angola’s second largest city, finds 55 children in the Okutiuka orphanage under the care of Sonia Ferreira. Her boyfriend, Wilker Flores, is a death metal guitarist who uses sounds and rhythms of this hardcore music as a path to healing. Or, as Sonia says, “to clear out the debris from all these years of war.” The feature documentary follows Wilker and Sonia’s attempts to stage Angola’s first-ever national rock concert, bringing together members from different strands of the Angolan hardcore scene from different provinces, as it all unfolds in fits and starts, against the bombed out and mined backdrop of the formerly stately Huambo.

Angola

Captures the tenacity and diversity of Angolan society. Beginning with a brief history of Angola's war for independence from Portugal, the documentary's up-beat pacing provides an engaging overview of Angola's social and economic landscape. City life, music, the economy, rural communities, and the effects of civil war and apartheid in neighboring South Africa are covered using scenes of every day life in Angola and commentaries from Angolans themselves.