The Cinema of Chad is small though growing. The first film made in the country appears to have been 1958 John Huston adventure film The Roots of Heaven, filmed when the country was still a part of French Equatorial Africa. Documentary filmmaker Edouard Sailly made a series of shorts in the 1960s depicting daily life in the country.[1] During this period there were a number of cinemas in the country, including in N'Djamena Le Normandie, Le Vogue, the Rio, the Étoile and the Shéherazade, and also the Rex in Sarh, the Logone in Moundou and the Ciné Chachati in Abéché. The film industry suffered severely in the 1970s-80s as Chad became engulfed in a series of civil wars and foreign military interventions; film production stopped, and all the cinemas in Chad closed down. Following the ousting of dictator Hissène Habré by Idriss Déby in 1990 the situation in the country stabilised somewhat, allowing the development of a nascent film industry, most notably with the work of directors Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Issa Serge Coelo and Abakar Chene Massar.[2] Mahamat-Saleh Haroun has won awards at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Venice International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival.[3] In January 2011 Le Normandie in N'Djamena, said to now be the only cinema in Chad, re-opened with government support.
The following is a sortable list of films produced or shot in Chad.[4]
| Year | Title | English translation | Director | Genre | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1958 | The Roots of Heaven | Adventure | American film partly shot in Chad | ||
| 1960 | Les Tonnes de l'Audace - Mission Ténéré Tchad | The Tons of Audacity - Mission Ténéré Tchad | René Quinet and Louis Sommet | Documentary | |
| 1966 | Pêcheurs du Chari | Fishers of the Chari | Ethnographic short | ||
| Le Lac Tchad | Lake Chad | ||||
| Salam el Kebir | |||||
| Les Abattoirs de Forchia | The Abattoirs of Forchia | ||||
| Largeau | |||||
| 1967 | Le Troisième Jour | The Third Day | Drama | Short | |
| 1969 | L'Enfant du Tchad | The Infant of Chad | Ethnographic short | ||
| 1972 | A la Découverte du Tchad | Discovering Chad | |||
| 1994 | Maral Tanié | Drama | Short | ||
| Un Taxi pour Aouzou | A Taxi for Aouzou | Drama | Short | ||
| 1995 | Goï-Goï | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Drama | Short | |
| Dilemme au Féminin | Female Dilemma | Drama | TV film | ||
| 1999 | Bye Bye Africa | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Drama | ||
| 2000 | Daresalam | Let There Be Peace | Issa Serge Coelo | War drama | |
| 2002 | Abouna | Our Father | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Drama | |
| 2005 | Addabache Djay Wara | Abakar Chene Massar | Drama | ||
| 2006 | Daratt | Dry Season | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Drama | |
| Issa Serge Coelo | Drama | ||||
| Kalala | Mahamat Saleh Haroun | Documentary | |||
| 2009 | Le Pèlerin de Camp Nou | Captain Majid (a literal translation would be The Pilgrim of Camp Nou) | Abakar Chene Massar | Drama | |
| La Deliverance | Richard Hunt | Documentary | |||
| 2010 | Un homme qui crie | A Screaming Man | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Drama | |
| 2013 | GriGris | Drama | |||
| 2015 | Parler de Rose, Prisonnière de Hissène Habré | Talking with Rose, Prisoner of Hissène Habré | Documentary | Spanish doc shot in Chad | |
| 2017 | Hissein Habré, une Tragédie Tchadienne | Hissène Habré, a Chadian Tragedy | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | Documentary | Co-produced by Senegal, France, Netherlands and the United Kingdom |
| 2021 | Lingui, les liens sacrés | Lingui, The Sacred Bonds | Drama |