Fanta is 14 years old and lives in Conakry, the capital of Guinea in West Africa. Besides school and her household chores, she spends every free minute training at the acrobatics circus. One day, the return of the country’s big star is announced. Balla Moussa Bangoura, founder of the Amoukanama Circus Company, is returning from an international tour and now plans to rehearse a new show with his troupe. Training gets harder, because only the best will be in it at the end.
Of course, Fanta is determined to give everything to be one of the few girls travelling the country with Balla Moussa Bangoura. Every day, she is torn between caring for her sick mother, housework, schoolwork and what she thinks she loves best. Supported by her family on the one hand, striving to fulfil all expectations on the other, Fanta begins to doubt: What does she really want? Marjolijn Prins delivers the atmospherically dense portrait of an extraordinary girl, connected by rousing musical numbers, spectacular acrobatics and dream-like acting sequences.

The dew drips promisingly from the leaves. Ayla wakes up in a beautifully flowering, lush landscape. A new mountain range arises in the distance. The summits: a smiling woman’s head. Ayla sets out towards it. The hills are the supportive nipples, the downy hair on the forearms is the grass she tenderly strokes with her fingers. When she sees a small dense forest on the horizon, she knows where she must go to find the ultimate fulfilment.
Luma Flôres shows Ayla’s self-exploration as an exquisite sensual and tender journey in intense colours. The discovery of her own body and lust are intertwined with the discovery of another, also female body. The intense sensuality remains metaphorical but vivid to the end – for example, when Ayla discovers her lover’s lap as a natural fountain in which she first dips her fingers and then her whole head and body. When the two are at last united in the water and sleep with each other, the animation changes from concrete representation to abstraction – which in turn bursts in the sky like fireworks. Flôres resolves her metaphorical dance only in the final moments of the film: The two women kiss, drift on the water. The fine art of love, but also the simplest, most natural thing in the world.

When Stella Nyanzi enters a room, action is guaranteed. The Ugandan feminist, gender researcher, anthropologist and poet does not mince her words in her fight against state oppression. She went to prison in 2017 for a vulgar poem in which she ridiculed head of state Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for almost 40 years. After she was released, Nyanzi ran for Parliament without the necessary funds for a campaign, printing and distributing posters and flyers in the slums of Kampala with her children. Her daughter did her mother’s make-up and hair for public appearances. Sometimes her almost adult children longed for more time for themselves. The family repeatedly faced police violence and finally emigrated to Germany.
Using a mobile handheld camera, the film absorbs its protagonist’s power, its rhythm matching her angry lyrics. The result is the portrait of a woman who has made radicalism and provocation her way of life. We get to know an activist who permanently pushes herself and the people around her to the limits. Still, it is hard not to get infected by Stella Nyanzi’s energy.