The Most Beautiful Film Locations in Africa
6 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful film locations in Africa are Masai Mara (Kenya), Valley of the Kings (Egypt) and Abu Simbel (Egypt). The list covers 6 film locations in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 3. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Africa gives cameras what no studio can build: horizons of open savanna, desert light on pharaonic stone, mountains that rise alone out of the plains. Filmmakers have come for the scale of it since the early days of cinema, from Hollywood epics staged among real temples to wildlife films that follow herds across entire ecosystems. Many of these places were famous long before film found them, and the screen simply carried their image further.
The Masai Mara in Kenya is the stage for the great wildebeest migration and its river crossings, among the most filmed wildlife events on earth. In Egypt, the Valley of the Kings hides the rock-cut tombs of New Kingdom pharaohs, including Tutankhamun, while the colossal statues of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel appear in the 1978 Death on the Nile. Mount Sinai, where tradition places the giving of the Ten Commandments, was itself a location for Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic of that name. Further south, Kilimanjaro rises as a free-standing volcanic massif above the Tanzanian plains, its glaciers lending a title to Hemingway's story The Snows of Kilimanjaro. In Nigeria, the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove shelters shrines and sculptures to the Yoruba river goddess Osun in one of the last stands of primary forest in the region.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Masai Mara | Protected area | Kenya | |
| 2 | Valley of the Kings | Archaeological site | Egypt | ✓ |
| 3 | Abu Simbel | Rock-cut architecture | Egypt | ✓ |
| 4 | Mount Kilimanjaro | Volcano | Tanzania | |
| 5 | Mount Sinai | Mountain | Egypt | |
| 6 | Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove | Nature reserve | Nigeria | ✓ |
01 Masai Mara
Kenya1.490° S 35.140° E
Image by sprinter1973 from Pixabay The reserve's name comes from two different languages layered together. "Maasai" is how the people call themselves; "Mara," in the Maa language, means "spotted" — a description of how the grassland looks from a distance, dotted with the scattered, low trees (mostly Balanites aegyptiaca, the desert date, rather than true acacia) that break up the plain into a mottled pattern.
Did you know? The BBC series Big Cat Diary was filmed here, following individual lions, leopards and cheetahs around the Musiara marsh, Leopard Gorge and the Mara River.
02 Valley of the Kings
Egypt · 6.5 km from Luxor25.740° N 32.602° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Freiheitsjunkie from Pixabay For nearly five centuries, from about 1539 to 1075 BC, the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried not under pyramids but in tombs cut deep into a dry valley on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes, modern Luxor. The valley lies beneath al-Qurn, a pyramid-shaped peak that may have been part of its appeal, and its hidden entrances were meant to defeat the robbers who had emptied the older royal tombs.
Did you know? Workmen who cut and painted the royal tombs lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina, and their records include what may be history's first documented labour strike.
03 Abu Simbel
Egypt22.337° N 31.626° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Olaf Tausch · Public domain Abu Simbel is two temples cut into a sandstone hill on the west bank of Lake Nasser, in Egypt's far south close to the Sudanese border. Ramesses II had them carved in the 13th century BC, at the Second Cataract where Egypt met Nubia, and they were meant to be seen from the river as a statement of pharaonic power.
Did you know? Carving the temples took about twenty years, from roughly 1264 to 1244 BC.
04 Mount Kilimanjaro
Tanzania · 30.3 km from Moshi3.067° S 37.359° E
Image by Squirrel_photos from Pixabay Kilimanjaro rises alone out of the plains of northern Tanzania, 5,895 metres high and some 4,900 metres above its own base. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain on Earth, a dormant stratovolcano built by more than two million years of eruptions along the East African Rift.
Did you know? In 2014 the Swiss-Ecuadorian runner Karl Egloff reached the summit in under five hours and was back at the gate in about 6 hours 42 minutes in total.
05 Mount Sinai
Egypt28.538° N 33.975° E
Berthold Werner · CC BY-SA 3.0 Three religions independently point at the same mountain. Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition all place the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses on this peak — known locally as Jabal Musa, "Mountain of Moses" — making it one of the very few places on Earth where the core narratives of all three Abrahamic faiths physically converge rather than just overlap thematically.
Did you know? The steep direct route to the summit, the Steps of Penitence, climbs some 3,750 rough stone steps up the ravine behind Saint Catherine's Monastery.
06 Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove
Osun-Osogbo Grove
Nigeria · 2 km from Osogbo7.755° N 4.551° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean-fidele E. Ananou · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, on the edge of the city of Osogbo in south-western Nigeria, is one of the last of the sacred forests that once bordered almost every Yoruba town. Its 75 hectares of forest line the meanders of the Osun River and are considered the dwelling of Osun, the Yoruba goddess of the river itself.
Did you know? The Osun-Osogbo Festival is believed to have been celebrated for more than 700 years.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful film locations in Africa?
- On our list, Masai Mara (Kenya) ranks first, followed by Valley of the Kings (Egypt) and Abu Simbel (Egypt).
- Which country has the most film locations in Africa?
- In our collection, the most come from Egypt (3), Kenya (1) and Nigeria (1).
- Was The Ten Commandments filmed at Mount Sinai?
- Yes. Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film shot location footage in Egypt and on the Sinai Peninsula, including Mount Sinai itself.
- Where was Death on the Nile (1978) filmed?
- Much of it was shot in Egypt, aboard a historic Nile steamer and at places such as Aswan, Luxor, Cairo and the temples of Abu Simbel.
- Why is the Masai Mara so often filmed?
- Each year vast herds of wildebeest and zebra move between the Serengeti and the Mara, crossing rivers full of crocodiles, and predators follow them. That concentration of action makes it a favourite of wildlife filmmakers.
- How many film locations are on this list in Africa?
- The list covers 6 film locations in 4 countries. Egypt has the most, with 3.