New York African Film Festival 2025 (NYAFF) screens films of Mother Africa and the Diaspora.
It’s a really good time for African and Diaspora creatives. The future belongs to the young, and Mother Africa is young and creative.
32nd New York African Film Festival 2025
Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Cinema, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
The 32nd New York African Film Festival 2025 honors the resilience of our ancestors and today’s African youth with over 100 films from 30 countries in Mother Afrika, with many filmmakers doing panels and post-screening Q&As, from May 7-31, 2025. The Festival starts at Film at Lincoln Center from May 7-13, continues at Maysles Cinema in Harlem from May 15-18, and ends as FilmAfrica at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, from May 23-29. 🇦🇴 🇧🇫 🇨🇻 🇨🇮 🇨🇩 🇪🇬 🇬🇼 🇰🇪 🇬🇭 🇲🇱 🇲🇦 🇲🇿 🇳🇬 🇸🇳 🇿🇦 🇸🇩 🇺🇬
This season brings films from Angola, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and more.
The theme “Fluid Horizons, A Shifting Lens of a Hopeful World” acknowledges the changes we are all going through in the context of hope because hope is what our ancestors and our youth rely on first to survive and now to thrive. We are seeing this idea in many African Diasporic cultural presentations in New York City right now. You have to believe in yourself and keep going, no matter what mess life throws at you.
This brings to mind the Kalûnga, the boundary between the world of the living and the ancestors in traditional Kongo culture. In life, the Kalûnga is the Atlantic Ocean. The Kongo people believed that the journey across it was a trip to the world of the dead because nobody ever came back. It turns out there was life on the other side. Those who had hope survived the terrible journey and brought the multi-dimensional richness of Africa’s many cultures to the Americas where African culture took over the world. The future belongs to the young and Mother Afrika is young. Together we can all hope for a better future.
31st New York African Film Festival 2024 Sees the Convergence of Time
Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Documentary Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
The 31st New York African Film Festival screens more than 90 African and Diaspora films from 30 countries on the theme “Convergence of Time;” from May 8-30, 2024. The Festival starts at Film at Lincoln Center in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, from Wednesday-Tuesday, May 8-14, 2024. $17. All-Access $99. The Festival continues at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem from May 17-19, and ends as FilmAfrica from May 24-30 at the DanceAfrica festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). 🇧🇷 🇨🇬 🇨🇩 🇪🇬 🇫🇷 🇬🇭 🇮🇳 🇰🇪 🇳🇦 🇳🇬 🇷🇼 🇸🇳 🇸🇱 🇿🇦 🇹🇿 🇺🇸 🇿🇼
There are films from Brazil, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, Ghana, India, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, United States, Zimbabwe,
The Opening Night film is the North American Premiere of “Over the Bridge,” Tolu Ajayi’s feature about corruption in Nigeria as an investment banker tries to figure out why his high-profile government project is failing. We have this problem everywhere. Governments throw money at a project, but by the time everyone in the supply chain takes their cut, there isn’t enough money left to actually do the work.
The Closing Night film is the New York Premiere of “Dilli Dark,” Dibakar Das Roy’s story about a Nigerian MBA candidate trying to make it while living a double-life as a drug dealer in India, and dealing with all the mess that goes with being a foreigner.
The Festival includes an “Art & Activism” town hall moderated by Paulette Young; at Africa Center in “El Barrio” East Harlem; on May 2, 2024 at 6pm.
There is a digital art exhibition “A litany for past suns labeled rituals / A star lit any and all possible futures” by Zainab Aliyu in the Amphitheater at Film at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center, starting 30 minutes before the first NYAFF screening. The exhibition is inspired by two poems, written years apart, whose themes converge in time. The poems are Nikki Giovanni’s “A Litany for Peppe” (1970), and Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” (1978). The piece uses uses ceremonial droning rhythms as a call to action to turn our shared past into our shared future. This is the West African concept of “Sankofa,” that it is good to look to the past in order to create the best possible future.
Harold George’s short film “Making Men” will be accompanied by the director’s dance troupe. That’s important because in traditional cultures, dance is how we pray.
The Convergence of Time
This year’s theme is “Convergence of Time.” That’s a brilliant description of where Africa and the Diaspora are now for several reasons.
In our work, trying to understand the Latin world, our biggest lesson in over a decade is how African we are, both as Latins and as Americans of the United States. We didn’t start out looking for that, but it is the truth that we found. You might even say that this truth found us. Most American popular culture including: gospel, blues, jazz, folk and country, swing, rock, disco, funk, hip hop, house, tap, trap, and now Afro-everything; originates in the African Diaspora.
The world is decolonizing. It’s a messy process that is ongoing, but an important part of it is that young people are shedding their parents’ old-fashioned biases. This creates opportunities on the world stage, and African artists are very much in the game.
We have been reporting on culture in New York City for over a decade, and there has been a big change. New York is in the midst of what we call the Harlem Renaissance 3.0, a flowering of Black Arts. The police lynching of George Floyd on of all days, Africa Day in 2020, really shook up America’s cultural leaders, and they have responded. Artists of color are getting opportunities in the arts that were not available before. It started in the art world. Broadway responded quickly, and it is now throughout the visual and performing arts. So this is the time.
Have you ever wondered why traditional African styling blends so well with Afro-Futurism? There is a strange convergence between our concepts of the past and the future. The future belongs to the young, and Mother Africa is young. That is why there is so much creativity coming from the African continent now. The New York African Film Festival is a window into the future.
New York African Film Festival
The New York African Film Festival was founded by Mahen Bonetti in 1993. Compared to Hollywood, African and Diaspora filmmakers draw on their own rich cultural framework. As we continue decolonizing, we are beginning to recognize the brilliance of African creatives.
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