The New York African Film Festival Returns with Record-Breaking Lineup at Tadias Magazine

The New York African Film Festival celebrates its 32nd year with a record 125 films from Africa and the diaspora, screening across NYC throughout May. (Courtesy photo)

Tadias Magazine

By Tadias Staff

Updated: March 8th, 2025

New York African Film Festival Marks Milestone Year with Record 125 Films Across NYC

New York (TADIAS) — The New York African Film Festival (NYAFF), one of the city’s cultural calendar since 1993, returns this May with its most expansive program to date. Marking its 32nd edition, the festival will showcase a record-breaking 125 films from Africa and the global African diaspora, unfolding across several iconic venues including Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Under the 2025 theme “Fluid Horizons: A Shifting Lens on a Hopeful World,” this year’s programming centers the voices of young filmmakers who are reshaping the continent’s narratives—often with handheld cameras, urgency, and creative boldness. The month-long event runs through May 31 and concludes with a free outdoor screening at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem.

Kicking off the festival is Freedom Way, the debut feature by Nigerian filmmaker Afolabi Olalekan—a tightly woven Lagos-set thriller about nine intersecting lives caught in systems of corruption and resistance. Other anticipated highlights include Memories of Love Returned, a moving documentary by Ugandan-American actor and filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, exploring photography as personal and collective memory; and So Long a Letter, an adaptation of the literary classic by Senegalese author Mariama Bâ.

From Lagos thrillers to Brooklyn documentaries, this year’s festival offers a sweeping look at African and diasporic storytelling through a bold, youthful lens. (Courtesy photo)

The festival also places a spotlight on Congolese cinema—both contemporary and archival—as well as a suite of panel discussions and gallery exhibitions that accompany the screenings. Events such as the Art & Activism town hall at The Africa Center (May 1) and the “From Then to Now” panel on African cinema (May 10) present thoughtful conversations with artists, scholars, and community leaders.

Notably, this year’s edition also sees NYAFF’s continued collaboration with DanceAfrica at BAM, which will highlight Mozambique through a lineup of rarely seen films including Ruy Guerra’s Mueda, Memory and Massacre, often referred to as Mozambique’s first feature film.

Among this year’s special programs is the premiere of The Cat Man Eshete, a new short documentary by Academy Award® nominee Laura Checkoway. The 25-minute film tells the story of Eshete, who is originally from Ethiopia, a devoted caretaker of a feral cat colony in Brooklyn. Eshete has become the heart of a close-knit community. This intimate document is equally a portrait of community care, with a supporting cast of New Yorkers who help care for the cats—and for each other. (Screening Saturday, May 17 at 8:30pm, followed by a Q&A with director Jean-François Ravagnan. Co-presented by Black Public Media.)

Complementing the screenings is the thought-provoking art exhibition All Night We Waited for Morning, All Morning We Waited for Night by multidisciplinary artist Bereket Adamu. The welded steel light sculpture and accompanying animated video reflect on global interconnectedness. Using materials such as cotton, hide skin glue, and ink, the piece explores themes of environmental disruption, self-agency, and intergenerational bonds that transcend borders. Through flickering light and shifting figures, Adamu’s work resists fixed meaning, offering a poetic meditation on change, presence, and absence.

From thrillers to documentaries, shorts to experimental works, the 2025 New York African Film Festival offers a panoramic view of African and diasporic storytelling at its most compelling. It is both a celebration of cinema and an invitation to reimagine the future—one frame at a time.

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If You Go:

For tickets and the full schedule, visit filmlinc.org/african, maysles.org, and bam.org/film/2025/filmafrica.

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