''ABC Africa'' is a

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

documentary feature film directed by

Abbas Kiarostami Abbas Kiarostami ( fa, عباس کیارستمی ; 22 June 1940 – 4 July 2016) was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of ...

. It was screened out of competition at the

2001 Cannes Film Festival The 54th Cannes Film Festival started on 14 May and ran until 20 May 2001. Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann was the Jury President. The Palme d'Or went to the Italian film ''The Son's Room'' by Nanni Moretti. The festival opened with ...

. Invited by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

to study the endeavors of the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans, Kiarostami and his collaborator Seifollah Samadian initially went to the country to scout locations for a feature-length film. However, when the pair returned home and examined the more than twenty hours of digital footage shot on

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

with a handheld video camera over the course of ten days, they decided their material was worth editing into the feature-length film. For Kiarostami, this film was a return to his early themes of resilient children in the face of adversity, but for the first time it was outside his homeland with a more versatile format. Nevertheless,

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

’s foremost film-maker has succeeded in locating reasons for optimism among the nearly two million orphans left helpless by the ravages of civil war and

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

Synopsis

Set in a refugee camp in Kampala, Uganda, Kiarostami intersperses scenes of women and children dancing, singing, and laughing with somber images of the death rampant from numerous diseases. Sometimes critiqued as touristic, there are several scenes of the children laughing, making faces at the camera, and being astounded as they watch their friends be recorded. Although this film is likely not the somber reflection on AIDS and civil war originally envisioned by the United Nations, it is a documentary of Kiarostami and Samadian's trip to Uganda, and the earnest reactions of the impacted women and children. The candid and often silly scenes of the children contrast sharply with quiet images of death that speak to both the true tragedies occurring as well as the everyday joys that allow the women and children to continue.

References

External links

* * * 2001 films Films directed by Abbas Kiarostami 2000s Persian-language films Iranian documentary films Films about orphans 2001 documentary films Documentary films about HIV/AIDS HIV/AIDS in Africa Ugandan documentary films {{2000s-documentary-film-stub