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ABC Africa

ABC Africa

2001
Documentary
1h 23m
Abbas Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, travel to Kampala, Uganda at the request of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development. For ten days, their camera captures and caresses the faces of a thousand children - all orphans - whose parents have died of AIDS. Recording tears and laughter, music and silence, life and death, the film attests to Africa's sunny resilience in the face of so much suffering and disease. (imdb)
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ABC Africa

2001
Documentary
1h 23m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 49.27% from 91 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(91)
Compact view
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Rated 05 Mar 2007
80
91st
While the apparent diffuseness may irritate some audiences, to this viewer it was more a matter of an essayistic and impressionistic approach that did not wish to "presume to know" its subject, and that managed, on a miniscule budget and with only semi-professional equipment, to produce some remarkable images and sequences that told several interrelated stories, and the story of their interrelation, however indirectly.
Rated 01 Jun 2007
12
58th
It doesn't feel tremendously well put together, but what's there is incredibly powerful. A pretty good documentary; I'd like to see more of Kiarostami's work.
Rated 28 Oct 2007
50
33rd
Less boring than Kiarostami's other films by virtue of the sheer hugeness of misery on display here. It does have its moments, but only this filmmaker could make disease, death, and suffering so banal
Rated 24 Oct 2008
43
31st
Honestly I expected more from Kiarostami. Attempting to describe this film the first word that pops to mind is "lazy". The guy was there with a cameraman and got a lot of footage of orphans buzzing around the camera. The interviews are uninspired and few - you probably get more minutes of self-indulgent focus on the director and his assistant themselves. For me the best thing he did here was to capture some raw African folk music.
Rated 18 Feb 2009
2
16th
"A patronising survey of a national tragedy."
Rated 02 Dec 2010
30
78th
"There is a sense here of an encroaching darkness humbly met, unburdened by one-note feelings such as fear or joy and simply experienced as a profound moment of enlightenment." - Keith Uhlich
Rated 09 Feb 2014
4
52nd
can't say this did much for me. however good the cause may be, there are too many dry monologues and interviews that just aren't very interesting. it's better with wordless images, but i don't really think there's been a lot of thought involved in putting them together.

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