World Cinema Festival

Xhosa is the new Spanish—at the cinema, that is. South African films released in 2005 won two of the industry’s most prestigious awards: Tsotsi, a multilingual production, took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, shot entirely in Xhosa, garnered the Golden Bear, the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize. Some of the credit for this international recognition must go to Sithengi, a non-profit established in 1995 to strengthen African film and expose it to foreign audiences. In November, Sithengi hosts the Cape Town World Cinema Festival and its component Film & TV Market, where distributors come to make deals for African productions. The next breakout African film—a Zulu-language interpretation of Fiddler on the Roof, perhaps?—will likely be discovered here.