A second $10,000 award is granted to the Nigerian filmmaker Aicha Macky for her project Zinder

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Unemployed youth, many looking to leave the country for want of better options, are swelling the ranks of gangs in Zinder, my hometown in Niger. They go unnoticed, until the day they rebel. They style themselves after black American ghetto kingpins.

In my film, I follow three characters into this world of gangs and dangerous neighbourhoods. I record their daily struggle for survival, their efforts to extricate themselves from illegal trades. I witness their street smarts, their despondency and their inventiveness.

My film explores the causes of radicalisation in the Sahel region, and means for escaping its ever-widening jaws.