Something different this week. Among the nearly 60 titles on offer at the recent Encounters documentary festival was Miguel Eek's Amilcar. Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973) was a thinker and an African leader. He led the anticolonial armed struggle in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde against Portugal but was assassinated 8 months before those countries became independent.
Miguel Eek was born in Madrid in 1982. Raised between Mallorca, Stockholm and Barcelona, where he graduated in Documentary Filmmaking at the Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia (ESCAC). He completed his training at the Arcada University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki.
Amilcar is a decade long project, drawing on letters to his wives, which seeks to move beyond iconography and return Amílcar Cabral to the realm of the human, the fragile, and the unfinished.
ACP managed to grab a fascinating few minutes with the filmmaker, between him delivering a Live Masterclass to an enthusiastic audience at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg on the complexities of running a 10 year movie project, and having to rush off to a sponsor's lunch.
And a reminder of our new crowdfunding campaign to help us bring you ACP in glorious video, so you can watch as well as listen. There's a whole bunch of rewards depending on your donations. Check that out at Thundafund - African Couch Potato. Every little bit helps.
Yes? No? Send us a text
Let us know what you think, what movie or series you would like to see featured, or just to tell us how brilliant it all is:
instagram.com/africancouchpotato
x.com/africancouchpot
gino.arlechino@gmail.com
WhatsApp Channel: Mzansi Film News, Views and Reviews
YouTube; African Couch Potato - YouTube
https://www.patreon.com/c/AfricanCouchPotato
Gino Shelile’s profile • Letterboxd
Member of the Film Critics Association of South Africa (FCASA)
Produced by Ted Loukes and A10 Consulting
ted@aten.co.za
Music by The_Mountain from Pixabay
CHqjHqS2RAMkVSeydGo7
© SANTE MEDIA 2026