ABC Africa
Retrospective of a Cinematic Master
/ Feature Documentary / Iran / 2001
In English, Persian / Arabic, English subtitles
No Premiere
Rated: Parental guidance is advised. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.
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Synopsis
In ‘ABC Africa’, Kiarostami maintains his customary stance regarding the tragedies of life, finding hope and beauty in the terrible situation of the orphaned children of Uganda, where violence has been a constant since the country’s emancipation from British rule in 1962. A rebel insurgency has kept the country in the midst of civil war since 1987; on top of this, in the late 1980s and early 90s, HIV infection reached epidemic proportions. Altogether, this multi-faceted crisis has meant the deaths of millions – and has orphaned nearly two million children.
In 2001, Kiarostami and a small film crew visited Uganda to document the work of the Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO). The result is ‘ABC Africa’. In his first work made outside his native Iran, the director takes an observational attitude, whether wandering through crowds of excited children (who play it up for the camera with the charm and enthusiasm reserved for the very young), exploring a dreadfully under-resourced AIDS clinic, or inadvertantly discovering the electricity in their hotel is cut off at midnight.
Through bringing necessary and urgent attention to – but not lingering on – the ravages of war and HIV/AIDS, and by not railing against the insufficient campaign against the scourge of the disease, Kiarostami allows ‘ABC Africa’ to become a celebration of the resilience of humanity in the face of unimaginable difficulty.