Pedro Pimenta

In a war-torn African country, a small group of young people, led by Mão-de-Ferro, a traumatized and violent war child, arrive in a mysterious city where children, abandoned by adults, have created their own utopian republic.

A series of six dramatic shorts, each from a different African country and all on the broad theme of "love in Africa."

This documentary shows how cinema has been used very differently in three neighbouring African countries with different colonial heritages: Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Madagascar. Mozambique used cinema newsreels as a crucial propaganda tool after the Portugese colonisers left. Madagascar boycotted US movies, so its screens were dominated by French, Indian and Hong Kong films instead. But a few films managed to get made. The situation in Zimbabwe was the worst, except that alone of the three countries it possessed an efficient film laboratory.