African Film Festival announced the full lineup for the 33rd New York African Film Festival, a cinematic celebration running throughout May across New York City, including in Brooklyn.
The festival will feature more than 100 films from over 30 countries across Africa and the diaspora, including more than 50 feature films and 60 shorts, with filmmakers participating in post-screening conversations.
NYAFF is co-presented by the Africa Center, Film at Lincoln Center, the Maysles Documentary Center, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and the New York City Parks Department.
“Across this year’s selection, filmmakers are reimagining the landscapes we inherit—drawing from ancestral wisdom not as something to leave behind, but as a source of renewal and possibility,” said Mahen Bonetti, founder and executive director of AFF.
This year’s theme, As the Stars Sow the Earth, frames the program around memory, ecology and imagination across African and diasporic worlds. The festival highlights how filmmakers engage colonial legacies, environmental histories and cultural memory while envisioning alternative futures rooted in ancestral knowledge and creative practice.
This year’s selections reflect filmmakers drawing on ancestral wisdom as a source of renewal, with many first-time directors offering new perspectives grounded in land, spirit and shared futures, according to Bonetti.
The festival opens May 1 at the Africa Center with a town hall on Black Space, followed by opening night May 6 at Film at Lincoln Center with the New York premiere of Promised Sky by Erige Sehiri. The centerpiece film, The Eyes of Ghana, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama and directed by Ben Proudfoot. Closing night features Shorts Program 3: The Art of Protection.
Highlights include The Soul of Africa, Rumba Royale, Lace Relations and Idris Elba’s short Dust to Dreams. Restored classics include Caméra Arabe and En résidence surveillée. A 36 Years at NYAFF digital exhibition presents archival interviews and photographs documenting the festival’s history.
Programs continue at Maysles Documentary Center May 15–17, BAM Rose Cinemas May 22–28 as part of DanceAfrica and conclude May 30 at St. Nicholas Park with Exuberant Jubilance, an outdoor shorts program celebrating resilience and joy across the diaspora.
