The 33rd New York African Film Festival runs May 1 through May 30, 2026, across Film at Lincoln Center, BAM, the Africa Center, the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, and St. Nicholas Park. More than 100 films from over thirty countries. More than fifty features. Sixty shorts. Filmmakers in attendance at post-screening conversations throughout the month. Co-presented by African Film Festival Inc., Film at Lincoln Center, BAM, the Africa Center, and the Maysles Documentary Center. It is the most comprehensive showcase of African cinema in the United States this year, and its lineup, read carefully, is a state-of-the-industry document.
The festival’s theme — “As the Stars Sow the Earth” — explores memory, land, and the creative traditions shaping African and diasporic futures. Founder and executive director Mahen Bonetti has described the selection as filmmakers “reimagining the landscapes we inherit — drawing from ancestral wisdom not as something to leave behind, but as a source of renewal and possibility.”
The Headline Films
The centrepiece is The Eyes of Ghana — Ben Proudfoot’s documentary about Rev. Dr. Chris Hesse, the 93-year-old personal cinematographer to Kwame Nkrumah, whose archive of more than 1,300 film reels thought destroyed after the 1966 coup may contain the most important visual record of African independence in existence. Executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. RollCallAfrica has covered this film and the archival urgency surrounding it at length. Its NYAFF centrepiece designation places it before the New York audience with the institutional, journalistic, and political infrastructure to convert attention into action — which the archive’s recovery requires urgently.
Opening night at Film at Lincoln Center on May 6 was Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky — the opening night film of Cannes Un Certain Regard 2025. César Award nominee Aïssa Maïga stars as an Ivorian pastor living in Tunisia who forms a makeshift family with the young women who find refuge in her home. Positioning a Cannes Un Certain Regard title as NYAFF’s opening night film signals the festival’s deliberate placement of African cinema within the international prestige framework rather than as a separate parallel cultural event.
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Olive Nwosu’s Lady — Special Jury Award at Sundance 2026, Berlinale Panorama — screens at BAM on May 23. David Mboussou’s Afrotōpia from Gabon had its New York premiere at NYAFF on May 9, director in attendance. Imran Hamdulay’s The Heart Is a Muscle — Berlinale Ecumenical Jury Prize winner, South Africa’s Oscar submission — also screens in the programme. Idris Elba’s directorial short Dust to Dreams appears alongside Judy Kibinge’s Goat and works from Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, and Cameroon.
The Ugandan Spotlight
The FilmAfrica programme at BAM (May 22–28) spotlights Uganda as this edition’s featured territory — a curatorial act with industry consequences for a territory the African festival circuit has historically underserved. Filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine’s documentary, built on a twenty-two-year journey exploring the life and photography of Ugandan photographer Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo, anchors the spotlight. The full digital exhibition 36 Years at NYAFF, featuring archival interviews and photographs with Ousmane Sembène, Safi Faye, Harry Belafonte, and Miriam Makeba, opens May 7.
What the Selection Argues
Reading the 33rd NYAFF as a whole, three things become visible. First: African cinema in 2026 is not dominated by any single territory or language tradition — the selection draws from Rwanda, Gabon, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tunisia, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt, and Cameroon, reflecting genuine creative diversity rather than commercial concentration. Second: the documentary tradition is receiving international distribution infrastructure at the same level as fiction — Obama executive production, Sundance competition, NYAFF centrepiece status. Third: the short film is the most active creative frontier, and NYAFF is treating it with curatorial seriousness the form rarely receives at this scale.
33rd NYAFF runs May 1–30, 2026. Full programme: filmlinc.org. Sources: NYAFF official programme (Film at Lincoln Center), BKReader (April 2026), Unheard Voices Magazine (April 2026). — Adaeze Okoye. RollCallAfrica, May 2026.
