Africa's Many Film Roles

The Paradigm
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
The 1994 genocide serves as a wake-up call to the West, with Rwanda as a bleak symbol of ignored injustices everywhere.

The Redeemer
Cry Freedom (1987)
A white newspaper editor in South Africa denounces antiapartheid activist Stephen Biko. He then turns hero, deciding that Biko has the right idea after all — and risks his life to get the word out.

The Paradise
Out of Africa (1985)
You're in a loveless marriage, you're broke and you have syphilis. But, as Meryl Streep discovers, Kenya's rolling plains can make it all better.

The Jungle
Tarzan of the Apes (1918)
Raised by apes, the original great white hope lives in an Africa filled with savages, man-eating lions and damsels in distress.

The Victim
The Constant Gardener (2005)
A drug company is using Kenya's poor as guinea pigs and nobody can stop it — until foreigners fueled by white guilt arrive to save the day.

The Battleground
Blood Diamond (2006)
Civil war, child soldiers, and Leo DiCaprio doing lots of running — Sierra Leone offers big issues and non-stop action rolled into one.