African Film Festival 2023

October 1–November 16, 2023

This year’s edition of the African Film Festival invites audiences to learn from and bear witness to the stories, visions, and histories of people across Africa and the African diaspora, whether through moments of the past that still mark our present day or through the events and struggles that color and define our current lives.

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Egúngún (Masquerade)
Money, Freedom, a Story of the CFA Franc
Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery
The Last Shelter
Juwaa

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Past Films

African Film Festival Shorts Program
Sunday, October 1 7 PM
From Nigeria to South Africa, London to Lagos, these short films bear witness to the extraordinary talents and stories of Africa and the African diaspora. The program includes John Ogunmuyiwa’s Precious Hair & Beauty, Olive Nwosu’s Egúngún, Tisa Chigaga’s Frieda, and Reabetswe Moeti’s Botlhale and Mma Moeketsi.
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The Last Shelter
Ousmane Zoromé Samassékou
Mali, France, South Africa, 2021
Thursday, October 12 7 PM
A transit house on the edge of the Sahara provides the last refuge for African migrants on their way through the desert—toward Algeria, Europe, or failure. “An arresting, artful, fragmentary portrait” (Variety).
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Juwaa
Nganji Mutiri
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belgium, 2021
Friday, October 20 7 PM
A mother and son confront (or avoid) the past that drove them apart in this powerfully acted Congolese/Belgian drama of identity, family ties, and intergenerational trauma, winner of Best Film at the Kinshasa Film Festival.
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With Peter Bradley
Alex Rappoport
United States, 2023
Presented in conjunction with What Has Been and What Could Be: The BAMPFA Collection
Sunday, October 22 4 PM
Alex Rappoport and Mike Henderson in Person
Pioneering Black abstract artist and curator Peter Bradley reflects on life and art in this invigorating, intimate documentary portrait. “Documentary in its purest form: one subject speaking and showing us his life and work. It is riveting” (Film Threat). With two short films by painter/filmmaker Mike Henderson.
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Money, Freedom, a Story of the CFA Franc
Katy Lena N’diaye
Senegal, France, Belgium, Germany, 2022
Thursday, November 2 7 PM
The tainted history of the CFA franc, a currency created (and still controlled) by France for its former sub-Saharan colonies, is investigated here, in “the most important contemporary document on Francophone Africa’s malignant economic relations with France” (Film Verdict).
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Ama: An African Voyage of Discovery
Kwesi Owusu, Nii Kwate Owoo
United Kingdom, Ghana, 1991
Sunday, November 5 4:30 PM
A Ghanaian English teenager’s chance discovery reawakens African legends and stories in an early 1990s England of floppy discs, yuppies, racists, and neon jackets in this restored 1991 cornerstone of diasporic Black cinema.
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Tug of War
Amil Shivji
Tanzania, South Africa, Germany, Qatar, 2021
Sunday, November 12 7 PM
Introduced by Zamansele Nsele
A young Marxist and a runaway Indian Zanzibari bride find love and revolutionary fervor amidst the atmospheric alleys and taarab nightclubs of 1950s-era Stone Town, Zanzibar, in this gorgeously languid Tanzanian period drama, and anti-colonial In the Mood for Love.
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Colette and Justin
Alain Kassanda
France, Belgium, 2022
Thursday, November 16 7 PM
The history of the Congo’s decolonization and independence is glimpsed through the recollections of the filmmaker’s grandparents in this New York Times Critic’s Pick, a “deeply personal, sometimes poetic, sometimes harrowing history of oppression, revolution, betrayal, disillusionment, and love” (Business Doc Europe).
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African Film Festival 2023

October 1–November 16, 2023

We present this series annually, largely drawn from the African Film Festival National Traveling Series, a program of the New York African Film Festival. As its founder and executive director Mahen Bonetti notes, it “was founded to counteract the voice-over, where Africans were being spoken for over grim images, and to provide a place where the seventh art could become a weapon for us to reclaim our voices, to reappropriate our images, and to add layers to the narrative. In each frame presented by the festival over three decades, we have found our connection with each other and our footing in other people’s spaces, while presenting myriad stories about all corners of the African diaspora and the human experience itself.”

This year’s edition invites audiences to learn from and bear witness to the stories, visions, and histories of people across Africa and the African diaspora, whether through moments of the past that still mark our present day—the struggle against British rule in 1950s Tanzania, the decolonization of Congo in the 1960s—or through the events and struggles that color and define our current lives: families struggling with intergenerational trauma, immigrants caught between identities, migrants risking it all for a new life, and artists fighting for a fair chance at the same acclaim and attention given to others.

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The African Film Festival National Traveling Series is organized by the African Film Festival, Inc. The BAMPFA presentation is coordinated by Film Curator Kathy Geritz and copresented by the Department of African American Studies, African Diaspora Studies Program, and Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley. This touring series has been made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and The Bradley Family Foundation. Special thanks to Mahen Bonetti, director, and Dara Ojugbele, program manager, for their assistance and support. The festival at BAMPFA includes additional titles.