A Kind of Paradise

Directed by Andreas Johnsen

"A country's cultural warriors are more important than its political warriors," says the world-famous Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And it is Africa's cultural combatants, we are presented to in Andreas Johnsen's eighth film, 'A Kind of Paradise'. Besides Adichie we meet contemporary artists, poets and musicians of six very different African countries: Angola, South Africa, DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Nigeria, who each tell their personal stories. "A Kind of Paradise" takes us through a continent that, despite economic, religious and political strife has a creative energy and will to survive, which we rarely see in Europe. We become cquainted with Africa through its people's passions and strengths rather than the familiar media images of natural disasters, poverty and corruption. "A Kind of Paradise" is an entertaining, thoughtful, serious and humorous image of a contemporary, modern Africa - an Africa that most of us do not know.