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Flag of Burkina FasoMovies: Best Movies from Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,878 sq mi), bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. As of 2021, the country had an estimated population of 23,674,480. Previously called Republic of Upper Volta (1958–1984), it was renamed Burkina Faso by President Thomas Sankara. Its citizens are known as Burkinabè, and its capital and largest city is Ouagadougou. The largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso is the Mossi people, who settled the area in the 11th and 13th centuries. They established powerful kingdoms such as the Ouagadougou, Tenkodogo, and Yatenga. In 1896, it was colonized by the French as part of French West Africa; in 1958, Upper Volta became a self-governing colony within the French Community. In 1960, it gained full independence with Maurice Yaméogo as president. Since it gained its independence, the country was subject to instability, droughts, famines and corruption. Various coups have also taken place in the country, in 1966, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, and twice in 2022 (January and September). Unsuccessful coup attempts took place in 1989, 2015, and 2023. Thomas Sankara came to power following a successful coup ... ()
Languages used in Burkina Faso: English


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105 movies found (page 1/4):

Sira(2023)

2h 2min | Drama
2.8/5 (with 1 vote)

After a brutal attack, a young nomad named Sira refuses to surrender to her fate without a fight and instead takes a stand against Islamist terror. A feminist counterpoint to current reporting from the Sahel region.

Directed by Apolline Traoré

11'09''01 September 11(2002)

2h 15min | Drama
3.3/5 (with 48 votes)

Filmmakers from all over the world provide short films – each of which is eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame of film in length – that offer differing perspectives on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Law(1990)

1h 21min | Romance / Love, Drama
3.3/5 (with 8 votes)

Saga returns to his village after an extended absence to discover that his father has taken Nogma, Saga's promised bride, for himself. Still in love with each other, the two begin an affair, although it would be considered incestuous.

Adanggaman(2000)

1h 30min | Drama
3.3/5 (with 4 votes)

In West Africa during the late 17th century, King Adanggaman leads a war against his neighboring tribes, ordering his soldiers to torch enemy villages, kill the elderly and capture the healthy tribesmen to sell to the European slave traders. When his village falls prey to one of Adanggaman's attacks, Ossei manages to escape, but his family is murdered except for his captured mother. Chasing after the soldiers in an effort to free her, Ossei is befriended by a fierce warrior named Naka.

Directed by Roger Gnoan Mbala

Entre Nós, Um Segredo(2020)

1h 18min | Documentary
4.5/5 (with 1 vote)

In 2014, Malian Toumani Kouyaté was urgently summoned to his native country to hear his grandfather tell his final story. Feeling death approaching, the experienced man decided to pass on the tradition.

Sarraounia(1986)

2.9/5 (with 3 votes)

On 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.

Yaaba(1989)

1h 30min | Kids & Family, Drama
3.0/5 (with 9 votes)

A small African village. The story focuses on Bila, a ten year old boy who befriends an old woman, Sana. Everybody calls her 'Witch' but Bila himself calls her 'Yaaba' (grandmother). When Bila's cousin Nopoko gets sick it is Sana's medicine that saves her.

La femme porte l'Afrique(2009)

52min | Documentary

The scene is set in Southern Burkina Faso, and also in different parts of the Ivory Coast. Five women are shown with their daily burdens and one can easily guess how heavy the burdens are. All five represent the African woman collapsing under Africa’s weight. This film could also bear the title " The Cry": The distress cry of women who are legion, and whose cause the author, thanks to the magic of cinema, wants to defend, even with the most cold-hearted. When he decided to show five women’s every-day lives, Mr Idriss Diabete, who promised to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, had no idea of the danger threatening him. Is with women temptation always present ? He gave in to it and has eventually offered us beauty.

An Uncommon Woman(2009)

Mina, CEO of a large company, decides to take a second partner. It is a daring and cavalier decision, in an environment where polyandry is viewed with suspicion. But Mina has her reasons.

Bintou(2001)

31min | Comedy

Bintou wants to make sure that her daughter goes to school, but her husband Abel doesn’t think it’s worth it and claims there is only enough money to educate their sons. But Bintou won’t give up and starts her own business to make the extra money. Abel, wary of losing control and scared that Bintou’s newfound financial freedom will lead her to adultery, tries to sabotage her efforts. Bintou tackles sexuality, gender relations, and the fraught relationship between tradition and modernity with joyful satire.

Kini & Adams(1997)

1h 33min | Drama
2.8/5 (with 2 votes)

Kini and Adams are two friends leaving in a Zimbabwe village who dream of repairing an old broken car, and moving to the city and starting life over.

Directed by Idrissa Ouédraogo - With Siyabonga Thwala, Sibongile Mlambo, David Mohloki, Netsayi Chigwendere, Nthati Moshesh, John Kani, ...

Sankofa(1993)

2h 4min | Drama
3.0/5 (with 6 votes)

On a photo shoot in Ghana, an American model slips back in time, becomes enslaved on a plantation and bears witness to the agony of her ancestral past.

Directed by Haile Gerima - With Afemo Omilami
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Mamy Wata(1990)

1h 30min | Drama

1968: Justin Ohounou is the Minister of the Interior Department. He is involved in scheming with a corrupt business man. His goal is to eliminate by all means his political enemy Christian Adegbe and all of the Adegbe Tribe.

Directed by Moustapha Diop - With Sidiki Bakaba, Sotigui Kouyaté, Philippe Ambrosini, France Zobda

Lucy's Revenge(1998)

1h 30min | Comedy

After Polish-born writer-director Janusz Mrozowski, a French resident for the past 30 years, made a series of 30-minute films based on African writings, he was approached by Africans to do a cinematic survey of past events in African history. Filming in Burkina Faso, Mrozowski responded with this comedy about a dictator kidnapped from the present-day and taken back through the mists of time. There he meets the mother of humanity, Lucy, who teaches him the basics of sexual equality. By the time he returns to the present, he's also received an education in 16th-century slave-trading and European influences on Africa.

Anger of the Gods(2003)

1h 35min | Drama

A king’s son takes over when his father dies.

Directed by Idrissa Ouédraogo

Soleils(2014)

1h 35min | Adventure, History
2.0/5 (with 1 vote)

A road-movie through time and space revisiting relationships between Europe and Africa.

Directed by Dani Kouyaté - With Rufus

Ouaga Girls(2017)

1h 22min | Documentary
3.1/5 (with 3 votes)

A group of young women from Ouagadougou study at a girl school to become auto mechanics. The classmates become their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, all while they are going through the life changing transition into becoming adults in a country boiling with political changes. In a country with youth unemployment at 52 percent, jobs are a hot issue. The young girls at a mechanics school in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou are right in the middle of a crucial point in life when their dreams, hopes and courage are confronted with opinions, fears and society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Using interesting narrative solutions, Theresa Traore Dahlberg depicts their last school years and at the same time succeeds in showing the country’s violent past and present. This is a feature-film debut and coming-of-age film with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.

Directed by Theresa Traore Dahlberg

The Heart's Cry(1994)

1h 26min
2.5/5 (with 2 votes)

This drama focuses upon the psychological adjustment problems of a young boy whose family moves him from Africa to Paris, France. Moctar, a boy whose first 11 years were spent in a small village in Mali, is having difficulty adjusting to his new life in Paris. After several years in Paris, Moctar suddenly sees a terrible hyena in the street. When Moctar tries to explain his vision, he becomes the laughingstock of his peers and a patient for the school psychologist. No one believes Moctar, not even his parents, until he is befriended by Paulo who helps Moctar understand.

Guimba the Tyrant(1996)

1h 33min | Drama, Comedy
2.8/5 (with 3 votes)

The movie shows the rise and fall of a cruel and despotic village chief Guimba, and his son Jangine in a fictional village in the Sahel of Mali.

Directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko - With Balla Moussa Keïta, Fatoumata Coulibaly, Habib Dembélé, Lamine Diallo, Cheick Oumar Maiga, Fabola Issa Traoré, ...

Keita! The Voice of the Griot(1995)

1h 34min | Fantasy, Drama
2.7/5 (with 3 votes)

It is an ordinary afternoon for young Mabo Keïta, at home, in Burkina Faso (West Africa). While his parents are taking a nap, he reads a schoolbook on the front porch when a stranger - an elderly man carrying his own hammock - appears for an unexpected visit. It turns out that the old man is a griot, a West African musician/entertainer whose performances include tribal histories and genealogies. The position of a griot is a time-honored one and passed down from father to son for many generations.

Directed by Dani Kouyaté - With Sotigui Kouyaté, Seydou Boro

Wallay(2017)

1h 24min | Drama
3.1/5 (with 5 votes)

Ady, a 13 years old boy, no longer listens to his father who raises him alone. The latter, running out of resources, decides to entrust Ady to his uncle Amadou for the summer. Uncle Amadou and his family live on the other side of the Mediterranean sea... in Burkina Faso! There, at 13 years, one must become a man but Ady, persuaded to go on holidays, understands things differently.

Directed by Berni Goldblat

God's Gift(1982)

1h 15min | Drama
3.2/5 (with 4 votes)

In pre-colonial times a peddler crossing the savanna discovers a child lying unconscious in the bush. When the boy comes to, he is mute and cannot explain who he is. The peddler leaves him with a family in the nearest village. After a search for his parents, the family adopts him, giving him the name Wend Kuuni (God's Gift) and a loving sister with whom he bonds. Wend Kuuni regains his speech only after witnessing a tragic event that prompts him to reveal his own painful history.

Directed by Gaston Kaboré - With Serge Yanogo, Joseph Nikiema, Colette Kaboré, Simone Tapsoba, Augustine Yameogo

Yelbeedo(1990)

1h 20min | Drama
2.5/5 (with 1 vote)

On their wedding night, a couple rescue a baby from a garbage bin only to adopt it some years later.

Wendemi(1993)

1h 35min

When Cecile (Sylvie Yameogo), an unwed mother-to-be, refuses to identify the father of her child, she is thrown out of her parents' home and eventually leaves her baby in a field, where another family finds him and takes him home. Michel (Alassane Dakissaga), the head of the household, reluctantly assumes responsibility for the baby after going to the police, the local priest and the traditional village chief, each of whom advises him to seek the counsel of another authority.

Dreams of Dust(2008)

1h 22min | Drama
3.6/5 (with 4 votes)

Nigerian farmer Mocktar comes to Essakane, a dusty gold mining camp in Burkina Faso, seeking work. Haunted by a tragedy-laden past, Mocktar stoically adapts to the horrid working conditions of his fellow miners. Enter the beautiful widow Coumba, who shares Mocktar's endurance but dreams of a better life.

Directed by Laurent Salgues - With Makena Diop

Haramuya(1995)

1h 27min | Drama, Comedy
2.5/5 (with 2 votes)

The story centers on a devout Muslim, Faco, who tries to run his two-wife household in the traditional way. The trouble begins when his ambitious younger son, Kalifa lapses and gets involved with his older brother's hoodlum friends. Kalifa then gives them his money and soon loses his job. The city has a curfew at night and only those with a highly-prized identity card are allowed out. Police rigorously patrol the streets in search of whores and people without cards. One homeless, unemployed man, Oussou, decides to earn the card by becoming a stoolie for the cops, and snitches on Kalifa's older brother, precipitating a police raid of Faco's home that results in their finding a cache of illegal drugs. Faco and the older son are both stripped naked and thrown in jail. Suddenly Faco finds himself brutalized and humiliated by his Muslim brothers. Meanwhile, the dark-skinned daughter of a white storekeeper, with a lust for black hookers, sets off to find her real mother.

Directed by Drissa Touré

The Birthday(2008)

12min | Drama, Comedy
2.5/5 (with 1 vote)

The beautiful Awa, from a poor background, decides to marry for money rather than love and ends up with the much older Karim. While married, she continues to love the much younger Bouba. On the happy occasion of Awa’s birthday, a macabre plan is to be set in motion.

Buud Yam(1997)

1h 37min | History, Drama
2.9/5 (with 4 votes)

In an early 19th century African village, Wend Kuuni - a young man, lives with his adopted family after his mother was killed as a witch. When Pughneere - his adopted sister - becomes ill, the villagers suspect Wend Kuuni. In order to save Pughneere's life (and his own) he must set out on a journey to find a healer. His quest brings him in contact with people around him and is a journey of self-discovery.

Directed by Gaston Kaboré - With Serge Yanogo, Colette Kaboré, Augustine Yameogo, Joséphine Kaboré, Hyppolite Ouangrawa

The Night of Truth(2004)

1h 35min | Drama, Romance / Love
2.5/5 (with 3 votes)

La Nuit de la Vérité is situated in an imaginary West African country. After ten years of civil war between the government army of the Nayak, led by 'Le président', and the Bonande rebels led by Colonel Theo, there is some sign of peace negotiations. But not everyone is in favor of peace and one can feel the tension. The night of truth starts with a festive dinner, but the village idiot Tomoto always seems capable of ruining the attempts for peace with violence and provocation.

Ashakara(1991)

2h 10min | Drama
2.9/5 (with 2 votes)

An action thriller which lends a multinational depiction of contemporary Africa and centers on a local homeopathic cure for a virus that has crept into Africa.

Directed by Gérard Louvin - With Emmanuel Pinda
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