Newsletter 
Throughout March, the French Institute of Finland and Cinema Orion invite you on a journey through Francophone African cinema with six films from different countries and eras. This program highlights intimate and political stories, striking aesthetics, and the diversity of forms, themes, and voices that showcase the vitality of African cinema.
The tickets will soon be available on the website of Cinema Orion.
March 2 at 7:40 PM – Life is beautiful (La vie est belle, 1987)
Young Kourou (Papa Wemba) leaves his village to pursue a music career in Kinshasa, Congo. From one adventure to another, he becomes a servant, a shoeshiner, a street singer, and a trusted aide to a nightclub owner. When he meets the beautiful Kabibi, it’s love at first sight — but he isn’t the only one captivated by her charm…
March 8 at 2 PM – Under the figs (Sous les figues, 2022)
Screening for International Women’s Day
Amid the fig trees during the summer harvest, young women and men explore new feelings, flirt, try to understand each other, and form — and sometimes flee — deeper relationships.
March 9 at 7.45 PM – Immigrant Nationality (Nationalité immigré, 1975)
A Mauritanian worker, Sidi, works in France. Like most immigrant laborers, he is assigned the hardest and most dangerous jobs. Sidi and his fellow workers are systematically and continuously exploited, both by their employers and by their own compatriots, who constantly offer fake work permits and shoddy housing sold at inflated prices for the right to sleep. Yet, faced with racism and economic exploitation, the immigrant workers come together, organize, and resist…
March 16 at 7.40 PM – Timbuktu (2013)
In Mali, not far from Timbuktu, which has fallen under the rule of religious extremists, Kidane leads a simple and peaceful life in the dunes with his wife Satima, his daughter Toya, and Issan, his 12-year-old young shepherd. In town, the inhabitants live powerless under the reign of terror imposed by jihadists who have taken control of their faith. Music and laughter, cigarettes, and even football are forbidden… Women have become shadows, trying to resist with dignity. Makeshift courts hand down absurd and tragic sentences every day. For a time, Kidane and his family seem spared from the chaos in Timbuktu. But their fate changes the day Kidane accidentally kills Amadou, the fisherman who attacked his favorite cow. He must then confront the new laws of these foreign occupiers…
March 23 at 7.40 PM – Tug of War (2021)
Adapted from the award-winning Swahili novel by Adam Shafi, set in 1950s Zanzibar: a romance buffeted by the harsh tides of British colonial rule and the local militant struggle for liberation. Denge, a young freedom fighter, meets Yasmine, a young Indo-Zanzibari woman fleeing an oppressive arranged marriage. Passion and revolution collide…
March 30 mars at 7.40 PM – The marks of wind (Les empreintes du vent, 2024)
A recent and deeply contemporary film, Les empreintes du vent offers an intimate reflection on memory, exile, and transmission. Through a minimalist approach and poetic storytelling, Layla Triki invites the audience to listen to the silences and traces left by history and human migration.
