By James Copnall,
BBC, Ouagadougou

All 20 films in the running at Africa's biggest film festival for the coveted Yennenga Stallion Award, Fespaco's top prize, have now been shown.

The Fespaco judges, who include Hollywood actor Danny Glover and Cameroonian author Calixte Beyala, will have come to their verdicts.

For the first time, there will be gold, silver and bronze stallions, so three film-makers will go home happy after Saturday's award ceremony.

But which film is most likely to win its creator the gold trophy?

The answer to that question changes depending on who you ask. Nevertheless, it is possible to narrow the field down.



This year's Fespaco has seen an unusually large number of films from southern Africa, and in particular South Africa, which has four entries.

Ramadan Suleman's Zulu love letter

A journalist in Zulu Love Letter suffers from writer's block
Traditionally Fespaco has been dominated by Francophone Africa, perhaps due to the greater emphasis placed on film in the Francophone world.

There is a feeling in the unofficial Fespaco headquarters, Ouagadougou's Hotel Independence, that for political reasons it may be appropriate to award the Yennenga Stallion gold to an Anglophone film.

If that is the case, Ramadan Suleiman's worthy and excellent Zulu Love Story, a tale of personal relationships and rebuilding society in post-apartheid South Africa, might be a contender.

But some people have other theories.



Colleagues from the BBC's French service think Algerian Belkacem Hadjadj's La Manara has an excellent chance.

O Heroi follows the fortunes of an Angolan soldier who has to fight to keep his prostetic leg from thieves

It too is a serious yet entertaining film.

O Heroi is about a soldier who has lost his leg in the Angolan civil war
It details the lives of five friends in Algeria as the country careers down the path to Islamic fundamentalism, and documents the changes within the lives and outlooks of those young people as they themselves take different roads.

My colleague Farai Sevenzo, himself a filmmaker, is convinced Zeze Gamboa's O Heroi (A Hero) should get the top gong.

It is a powerful tale of a soldier who has lost his leg in the Angolan civil war trying to adjust, just like his country, to the end of the war and the difficult return to something approaching normality.

I suspect my personal favourite, Tasuma le Feu by Burkinabe Daniel Kollo Sanou, will not win.

It is a moving and funny tale of a former French colonial army conscript who struggles to get the pension the French government owes him. However, it may be seen as too lightweight to pick up the highest honours.

Everybody here has their opinion on Fespaco 2005's best film - but the only one that matters is that of the judges.