OUAGADOUGOU – Africa’s biggest film festival will stress the threat from pirated movies when it opens in the capital of Burkina Faso on February 26 with 475 films being shown, its organiser said Friday. “The cultural AIDS which is piracy is slowly killing our cinema industry,” Michel Ouedraogo told a press conference.
But he hailed the fact that the number of entries far exceeded the 300 expected, and praised the participation of countries with struggling industries such as Madagascar, Niger, Tanzania, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, or FESPACO, which this year runs to March 5, is a two-yearly event gathering thousands of fans from across the continent and the African diaspora.
Eighteen feature films are competing for the top prize, the Etalon d’Or de Yennenga or Golden Stallion of Yennenga, which was won in 2009 by Ethiopian Haile Guerima’s ‘Teza.’
