Pride and interest in Africa has increased dramatically this World Cup year, and as always it seems as if filmmakers have been ahead of the curve. On result was VIFF experienced an incredible increase in the number of submitted films set in sub-Saharan Africa. With such a wealth of material to choose from, programmers and organizers decided it was time to launch a new series. And what a series it is. Following, in alphabetical order, are brief highlights from those films selected for Life Above All: Africa Today:

Bush League. The players on the Tony Bombers football team in Zokolere, Malawi, serve as a microcosm for Director Cy Kuckenbaker's on-the-ground look at social progress - and the lack thereof - in that Malawian village. The team's engaging players shed light on their issues and concerns while the film as a whole captures the frustrations faced by Westerners trying to "do good."

Kinshasa Symphony from German Directors Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer, shows how people living in one of the most chaotic cities in the world - Kinshasa, in the war-riven Democratic Republic of Congo - have managed to forge one of the most complex systems of human cooperation ever invented: a symphony orchestra. The usually staid magazine, The Economist called Kinshasa Symphony, "An ode to joy."

Life, Above All is a South Africa-Germany coproduction with a script by Vancouver's Dennis Foon. It is also the film that gave the series its name. Variety wrote that Director Oliver Schmitz's Cannes hit features "strong narrative drive and a lived-in sense of community... [It's] an emotionally rich adaptation of Allan Stratton's novel Chanda's Secrets... [that offers] a forceful account of a courageous 12-year-old fighting small-minded prejudice in her South African village..."

A Place Without People. In the name of "conservation" the vast Serengeti plain in Tanzania has been made off-limits to the very Massai who have historically populated and lived from it. In this Greece/Tanzania coproduction, Director Andreas Apostolides documentary examines the growth of nature reserves and tourism on the Serengeti, and the social ramifications for the country's indigenous peoples.

Raindrops Over Rwanda is from Director Charles Annenberg Weingarten. At the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda, the bodies of Tutsis murdered during the genocide are left unburied as a powerful reminder of the violence that claimed the lives of 800,000 people. Weingarten travels throughout the country with survivor Honore Gatera to discover how Rwandans are working to forgive and move forward.

Shooting with Mursi is a British production co-directed by Ben Young and Olisarali Olibui. VIFF programmers say that it is more extraordinarily "exotic" than Leni Riefenstahl's Africa, as co-director Olibui traverses his tribe's ancient lands in Southwest Ethiopia with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a camera in the other, documenting the inter-tribal rivalries and threats of encroachment on the Mursi's traditional lands from a consummate insider's point of view.

Togetherness Supreme is from Kenya. Nairobi resident and Director Nathan Collett's debut feature focuses on three young adults from three different tribes, all living in Kibera, Kenya, East Africa's largest slum, and getting caught up on the 2007 post-election violence that saw Kibera as a flashpoint. An insightful humanist drama full of startling authenticity, made with locals in key roles both in front of and behind the camera.

Zanzibar Musical Club is a France/Germany co-production from co-directors Philippe Gasnier and Patrice Nezan. Given the island nation's place at the crossroads of the spice route, Taarab, the music of Zanzibar, reflects two millennia of cultural exchange between East and West. Philippe Gasnier and Patrice Nezan's stirring documentary uncovers a world fed with Arabic tones, Latin rhythms, Indian melodies and African drums.

For more information visit VIFF 2010 online.