15 African Projects Restored and Distributed on French TV5MONDE+

On 11th May, 2026, TV5MONDE+, a global, free streaming service owned by the public television network TV5MONDE, made 15 restored African films available for global access under a designated Cinémathèque Afrique space. The launch has been framed as a landmark collaboration between TV5MONDE and the French Institute (Institut français). 

The first restored works include Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and Mamadou Sarr’s Afrique sur Seine (1955), Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s Lamb (1963), Moustapha Alassane’s Le Retour d’un aventurier (1966), Désiré Écaré’s Concerto pour un exil (1967), Henri Duparc’s Mouna ou le rêve d’un artiste (1969), Désiré Écaré’s À nous deux, France! (1970), Sidney Sokhona’s Nationalité : immigré (1975), Ben Diogaye Beye’s Les Princes noirs de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1975), Moustapha Alassane’s Samba le Grand (1977), Jean-Michel Tchissoukou’s La Chapelle (1979), Mweze Ngangura and Benoît Lamy’s La vie est belle (1987), Henri Duparc’s Bal poussière (1988), Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s Tabataba (1988), Samba Félix Ndiaye’s Le Trésor des poubelles (1989), and Pierre Yaméogo’s Wendemi, l’enfant du bon Dieu (1992). 

The restored projects include feature films, documentaries, and animation that showcase four decades of vibrant African creativity and reveal  the depth of vision brought by the continent’s filmmakers. The launch coincides with the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, on 11–12 May 2026, followed by a Cannes Film Festival presentation on 17 May 2026 at the French Institute space on the Critics’ Week Beach.

The restoration of these 15 African projects follows the restoration of Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Tilaï. Tilaï was restored to preserve and make accessible a key work of African cinema and selected to screen as part of the 2026 Cannes Classics. 

The Cinémathèque Afrique was created in 1961 and entrusted to the French Institute in 2011. The institute brings together a catalogue of over 1,700 titles made available to researchers, programmers, and filmmakers. To ensure public distribution and renewed accessibility, the French Institute acquires non-commercial distribution rights for more than 600 titles, for which subtitled distribution copies in several languages have been produced.

The restored African projects are now available for global access on TV5MONDE+ website under the “Cinematheque Afrique” collection.