The Cinema of Chad is small though growing. The first film made in the country appears to have been 1958

John Huston John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...

adventure film '' The Roots of Heaven'', filmed when the country was still a part of

French Equatorial Africa French Equatorial Africa (french: link=no, Afrique-Équatoriale française), or the AEF, was the federation of French colonial possessions in Equatorial Africa, extending northwards from the Congo River into the Sahel, and comprising what are ...

. Documentary filmmaker

Edouard Sailly Edouard Sailly is a pioneering Chadian film director, "the first filmmaker in Chad". Life Sailly trained in France with Actualités Françaises. In the 1960s and early 1970s he made a series of short, mostly ethnographic, documentary films. Fil ...

made a series of shorts in the 1960s depicting daily life in the country. During this period there were a number of cinemas in the country, including in

N'Djamena N'Djamena ( ) is the capital and largest city of Chad. It is also a special statute region, divided into 10 districts or ''arrondissements''. The city serves as the centre of economic activity in Chad. Meat, fish and cotton processing are the ...

''Le Normandie'', ''Le Vogue'', the ''Rio'', the ''Étoile'' and the ''Shéherazade'', and also the ''Rex'' in

Sarh Semi-active radar homing (SARH) is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer-range air-to-air and surface-to-air missile systems. The name refers to the fact that the missile itself is only a passive det ...

, the ''Logone'' in

Moundou Moundou () is the second largest city in Chad and is the capital of the region of Logone Occidental. The city lies on the Mbéré River (a tributary of the Western Logone) some 475 kilometres south of the capital N'Djamena. It is the main cit ...

and the ''Ciné Chachati'' in

Abéché Abéché ( ar, أبشه, ''Absha'') is the fourth largest city in Chad and is the capital of Ouaddaï Region. It has within it the remnants of the ancient capital, including palaces, mosques, and the tombs of former sultans. History The city o ...

. The film industry suffered severely in the 1970s-80s as Chad became engulfed in a series of civil wars and foreign military interventions; film production stopped, and all the cinemas in Chad closed down. Following the ousting of dictator

Hissène Habré Hissène Habré (Arabic: ''Ḥusaīn Ḥabrī'', Chadian Arabic: ; ; 13 August 1942 – 24 August 2021), also spelled Hissen Habré, was a Chadian politician and convicted war criminal who served as the 5th president of Chad from 1982 unt ...

Idriss Déby Idriss Déby Itno ' (18 June 1952 – 20 April 2021) was a Chadian politician and military officer who was the president of Chad from 1990 until his death in 2021. Déby was a member of the Bidayat clan of the Zaghawa ethnic group. A high-ranki ...

in 1990 the situation in the country stabilised somewhat, allowing the development of a nascent film industry, most notably with the work of directors Mahamat-Saleh Haroun,

Issa Serge Coelo Issa Serge Coelo (born 1967) is a Chadian film director. Born in Biltine, Chad, Biltine, Chad, he studied history in Paris and film at the École supérieure de réalisation audiovisuelle (ÉSRA). He then worked as a cameraman at Métropole Tél ...

and Abakar Chene Massar. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun has won awards at the

Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou or FESPACO) is a film festival in Burkina Faso, held biennially in Ouagadougou, where the organization is based. It ...

Venice International Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

and the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

. In January 2011 ''Le Normandie'' in

, said to now be the only cinema in Chad, re-opened with government support.

List of Chadian films

The following is a sortable list of films produced or shot in Chad.Various (2000) ''Les cinémas d'Afrique: Dictionnaire'', Editions Karthala, p. 407

External links

Chadian film
at the

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

References

{{World cinema navbox

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

List of Chadian films

See also

External links

References