The opening night film at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, Erige Sehiri’s bittersweet drama stars César Award nominee Aïssa Maïga as an Ivorian pastor living in Tunisia, forming a makeshift family with the young women who find refuge in her home.

The latest feature from two-time Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot follows 93-year-old Chris Hesse—personal cinematographer to African leader Kwame Nkrumah—on a quest to rescue an archive of films that could rewrite history.

Defense is key to evolution in this selection of short films. This program includes Nimco Sheikhaden’s Exodus; Shiloh Tumo Washington’s Bailey’s Blues; Justice Rutikara’s Ibuka, Justice; Aminata Drynie Bockarie’s Where the Water Meets Us; Klein Ongaki’s The Land Smiles Back; Abdelkrim Boughoud’s Eauquation – Water Distribution at Douiret-Sbâa; Catherine McKinley, Mamadou Tapily, and Marc Lesser’s Keïta La; and Marwa Eltahir’s 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied to Yours.

In Gabon, within the Congo Basin, a young aspiring filmmaker forced into his father’s logging empire uncovers a plan to destroy a sacred forest—and a buried colonial-era family secret.

When a 9-year-old girl from a quaint Somali village goes missing, her older sister and two friends set out on a journey to find her in Mohammed Sheikh’s debut feature, a celebration of courage, loyalty, and humanity.

Férid Boughedir’s passionate, fast-paced documentary links politically engaged Arab cinema from the 1960s onward to major historical events, highlighting how directors grappled with questions of identity and expression.

Férid Boughedir’s documentary, which premiered at Cannes in 1983, recalls the first 20 years of the new auteur cinema of sub-Saharan Africa’s indefatigable—and still-enduring—drive for self-expression.

Pioneering Senegalese filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s biting political satire is set in a fictional African state where corruption, media control, and forced exile reveal the human cost of unchecked power. Preceded by Ahmad Cissé’s N’Dobine and Stéphane Soumanou Vieyra’s Vieyra, The Innovative Pioneer.

An Ecumenical Jury Prize winner at the Berlinale and South Africa’s entry to the 2026 Academy Awards, this moving redemption story centers on a father forced to confront the past after his violent reaction to his young son’s brief disappearance.

As colorful and multilayered as Nigerian fabrics, this documentary uncovers the history of the textile trade that has intertwined Nigeria and Austria for centuries, enriching Europe while contributing to the collapse of West Africa’s indigenous textile economy.

A daughter unravels the disappearance of her father, the peaceful opposition leader to Qaddafi, and pieces together her mother’s 19-year search to find him in this raw and reflective documentary, winner of the Jury Prize at the Marrakech International Film Festival.

In 1959 Léopoldville, as Belgian colonial rule nears its end, a young photographer (Congolese rumba star Fally Ipupa) documenting the city’s vibrant nightlife becomes entangled in the fragile social world of a legendary rumba nightclub.

Based on one of the first feminist novels of modern Africa, So Long a Letter follows a teacher and mother who must find a balance between the Western ways she values and the traditions she respects when her husband decides to take a second wife.

The first African film to open the Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors section, this bold, visually striking drama follows a tight-knit group of misfit dancers whose world is upended when one’s mother falls critically ill. Preceded by Christian Saint and Mélissa Rouillé’s Akosua.

Discover expeditions of identity in this sequence of short films. The program includes Tomisin Sarumi’s Departing, Johanna Makabi’s Happy Meal, Herrana Addisu’s The River, Eseoghene Obrimah’s Heartbreaks & Ocean Waves, Agathe Moubembé’s Faux Lion, Stephanie Adusei-Boateng’s Knotless, Rashida Seriki’s Leaving Ikorodu in 1999, and Chiemeka Offor’s Nwanne M Nwaanyi.

An arrangement of short films retrieves the precious memories from the past. This program includes Femi Bajulaye and Emmanuel Oluwaseyi Bajulaye’s Ekun Omi, Josh Bridge’s Caleb, Judy Kibinge’s Goat, Karanja Ng’endo’s Of Kimani, Cecilia Zoppelletto’s Clichés, and Idris Elba’s Dust to Dreams.

This special digital exhibition of materials from the extensive archive of the African Film Festival features never-before-seen interviews, discussions, and photographs with a host of pioneering figures such as Ousmane Sembène, Safi Faye, Bill Greaves, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Ossie Davis, and more.