- All the characters and all the sets in The Legend of the Sky Kingdom were made out of junk. It is the first full-length Zimbabwean animated film. The film has no opening or end credits.
- Souleymane Cissé shot the first full-length Malian feature, The Young Girl, in the Bambara language, the country's main indigenous language.
- Yeelen is the first African film to win a prize in the history of Cannes Film Festival when it won the Jury Prize in 1987.
- In 2008, Manouchka Kelly Labouba became the first woman in the history of Gabonese cinema to direct a fictional film with Le Divorce (2008).
