Let me begin by being clear about what this piece is not. It is not an argument that Ben’Imana and Congo Boy did not deserve their Cannes prizes. They did. Ben’Imana is a formally accomplished, emotionally precise film about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, and its Caméra d’Or is a genuine triumph. Congo Boy is a film of extraordinary authenticity about a teenager’s survival of war and his salvation through music, and Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset’s Best Actor prize is fully earned. These are great films. This is not a complaint about them.
It is a question about the pattern they sit inside. The two African films that won at Cannes 2026 were about genocide aftermath and surviving a militia shooting. The South African film that won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Berlinale earlier this year, The Heart Is a Muscle, is about generational trauma and violence in the Cape Flats. The pattern is not new. For decades, the African films that reach the major international festivals — and especially the African films that win at them — have disproportionately been films about suffering: war, genocide, poverty, displacement, violence, disease. The question the industry needs to ask honestly is why.
The Two Explanations
There are two explanations, and the truth is probably some combination of both. The first is that these are simply the great films — that African filmmakers, working in societies that have experienced genuine and severe historical trauma, are drawn to that material because it is the most urgent and significant material available to them, and that the festivals are simply recognising the best work. On this reading, the pattern is not a bias. It is a reflection of the reality that African history contains more than its share of catastrophe, and that serious artists engage with the catastrophe of their societies.
The second explanation is less comfortable. It is that the international festival apparatus has a specific appetite for African suffering — that the programmers, critics, and juries who control access to the major festivals are most receptive to African films that confirm a particular image of the continent as a site of trauma, and least receptive to African films that depict the continent’s ordinary life, its comedy, its romance, its genre entertainment, its joy. On this reading, the African films about suffering win because suffering is what the gatekeepers expect and reward from African cinema, and African films that do not offer suffering struggle to reach the same platforms.
The Evidence on Both Sides
The evidence for the uncomfortable explanation is the specific contrast between what African cinema produces and what reaches the festivals. The Nigerian film industry produces enormous quantities of comedy, romance, and commercial entertainment — the Gingerrrs and the Call of My Lifes and the Behind the Sceness — that constitute the actual texture of African screen culture as Africans experience it. Almost none of that reaches Cannes or the Berlinale. The African films that travel are the heavy ones. An African romantic comedy of genuine quality has a far harder path to the Croisette than an African film about genocide.
But the evidence for the first explanation is also real. Clarissa — a Virginia Woolf adaptation, not a trauma narrative — was at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this year and received a standing ovation and a NEON deal. The Esiri Brothers reached the festival circuit with a film about interior life and social performance, not suffering. The pattern is not absolute. The festivals are, slowly, beginning to receive African films that are not about catastrophe. The change is real even if it is incomplete.
What the Industry Should Do
The honest position is to hold both truths. African filmmakers should make films about the genocide and the war and the trauma when that is the material that calls to them — Ben’Imana and Congo Boy are proof of how powerful that work can be, and no filmmaker should be discouraged from the most urgent material of their society. But the industry should also be clear-eyed about the trauma expectation, name it where it operates, and actively build the festival and distribution pathways for the African films that depict the full range of African life — the comedy, the romance, the genre entertainment, the joy that constitute most of what Africans actually watch.
The goal is not to stop making the heavy films. The goal is to ensure that the heaviness is a choice the filmmaker makes freely, not a price the filmmaker pays for access. African cinema will have fully arrived when an African romantic comedy can win at Cannes — not because the romantic comedy is more important than the genocide film, but because African filmmakers will be free to make either one and reach the world with it. We are not there yet. Naming the gap is how we get there.
— Emeka Eze. RollCallAfrica, Lagos. 6 June 2026.
