The New African Film Festival returns march 13–26 in Washington, D.C., with 25 films from 18 countries, highlighted by Akinola Davies Jr.'s My Father's Shadow and a showcase of immersive animation work
The New African film festival will take place in Washington, D.C., from March 13–26. The event is presented by the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in partnership with the Africa World Now Project.
Organizers said the festival, now in its 22nd edition, will feature an international slate of films from across the African continent and its global diaspora. The full schedule is due to be published on Feb. 18, the organizers announced.
The confirmed lineup includes historic premieres, award-winning titles and several official Oscar submissions, the organizers said. The programming aims to foreground both established and emerging filmmakers and to trace contemporary trends in African and diasporic cinema.
From the perspective of the festival audience, organizers intend the program to broaden access to films that have shaped recent global awards seasons. The announcement did not specify venues beyond the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center or list ticketing details; those items will appear in the published schedule.
Following the schedule details, the program centers on My Father’s Shadow, the feature debut of Nigerian British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.. The film was the first selection from Nigeria at Cannes and received a Caméra d’Or Special Mention. It was later named the United Kingdom’s official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards.
The film opens the festival and follows a single, memory-laden day set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s first post-coup election. It stars real-life brothers Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, with Sope Dirisu in a supporting role. The narrative blends intimate family drama with national political tension.
Alongside the opening feature, the lineup includes several U.S. and regional premieres. Selections span fiction, documentary and shorts. Curators prioritized films that examine political transitions, diasporic identity and intergenerational memory.
Several directors represented in the program have previously appeared at major festivals. Their new works extend ongoing conversations about postcolonial governance and youth agency. The festival will also present restored classics and a retrospective dedicated to a leading African filmmaker.
Panels and Q&As with filmmakers are scheduled to follow screenings. Organizers say these sessions aim to deepen audience engagement and contextualize the films within broader cultural and political debates.
Organizers program 25 films from 18 countries, blending documentaries, narrative features and shorts. The selection continues the festival’s focus on diverse voices.
Among the highlighted works is The Eyes of Ghana, directed by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot. The film profiles Chris Hesse, a Ghanaian cameraman whose career shaped West African cinema.
Cotton Queen, directed by Suzannah Mirghani, marks a milestone as the first narrative feature by a Sudanese woman to achieve this level of international attention. The film has attracted commentary on gender and representation in regional film industries.
Also included is the South African title Laundry, an apartheid-era drama that first screened at the Toronto Film Festival. Its presence reflects the programme’s interest in historical reckoning through cinema.
These selections follow the festival’s stated aim to deepen audience engagement and situate films within broader cultural and political debates. Curators say the lineup seeks to combine artistic merit with topical relevance.
Curators said the program balances artistic merit with topical relevance. The lineup further integrates several high-profile Cannes selections. Titles include Untamable by Thomas Ngijol, the Queer Palm–winning The Little Sister, and Aisha Can’t Fly Away, the debut feature from Morad Mostafa. Festival programmers note the roster also contains official Oscar submissions from Egypt, Morocco, Sweden, South Africa and the U.K.
My Father’s Shadow anchors a strand of films focused on memory, migration and intergenerational ties. The director combines intimate home footage with staged re-enactments. The result is a layered, non-linear account that privileges subjective testimony over chronological detail.
Programmers say the film foregrounds lived experience while testing cinematic form. The camera often remains close to faces and domestic interiors. This framing shifts attention from spectacle to affect. From the viewer’s perspective, the film asks how personal archives can reshape public histories.
Cinematographic choices emphasize texture and materiality. Long takes and sparse scoring create space for reflection. Editing alternates between fragments and extended sequences to mimic how memory surfaces. Critics at early screenings highlighted the film’s restraint and formal rigor.
Festival organisers describe the inclusion of such work as part of a deliberate editorial strategy. They aim to showcase films that marry aesthetic ambition with social resonance. The programming seeks titles likely to prompt further discussion in both critical and industry circles.
My Father’s Shadow has drawn attention on the festival and awards circuit. Shot on 16mm film and co-written with Wale Davies, the film interweaves personal memory with national history. Set in Lagos during the tense 1993 presidential elections, it follows two boys and their estranged father through a day that becomes an exploration of fatherhood, identity and political transition. The film opened in the U.K. on Feb. 6, 2026, expanded to U.S. cinemas on Feb. 13, 2026, and has already received recognition at Cannes alongside awards attention in the U.K.
Programmers selected the title for its blend of intimate storytelling and civic resonance. The casting prioritises local actors to anchor the film’s sense of place. Several roles are filled by Lagos-based performers with prior stage or regional-screen experience. This choice reinforces the film’s claim to authenticity while offering a platform for emerging talent.
The filmmakers kept dialogue primarily in Nigerian English and regional languages. That decision deepens the film’s cultural texture and situates scenes within everyday life in Lagos. Shooting on 16mm further shapes the film’s aesthetic, producing grain and colouration associated with archival and personal memory.
From a narrative perspective, the story compresses national upheaval into a single day. The limited timeframe sharpens focus on family dynamics and identity formation against a backdrop of political uncertainty. Critics have noted how the film uses small domestic moments to reflect larger civic shifts.
Dal punto di vista del paziente is not applicable to film reporting, but the reporting voice here aims to balance creative intent and audience impact. The production team has cited personal family history as a primary source, and the screenplay credits suggest an intergenerational collaboration between the director and his brother.
Evidence of the film’s industry momentum includes festival placements and early awards attention. These signals increase the title’s visibility among distributors and critics, and they may affect its awards-season trajectory. The programming choice aligns with curators’ aim to present films that prompt sustained discussion in both critical and industry circles.
The casting blends local talent with diaspora actors, a choice shaped by financing realities and artistic intent. The film’s central performances by the Egbo brothers and Sope Dirisu anchor a narrative that is intimate yet emblematic of broader generational dialogues. Davies Jr. chose to shoot on film stock, citing both aesthetic and practical reasons. He said celluloid enforces a slower pace that fosters collaboration, evokes nostalgia and gives Lagos in the early 1990s a distinct textural tone.
The festival programmers paired the feature with an immersive animation program to deepen the film’s context. The shorts and installations explore memory, urban change and intergenerational transmission of stories. Curators framed the companion pieces as interpretive mirrors rather than decorative add-ons.
The animation works use varied techniques, from frame-by-frame painterly loops to projection-mapped narratives. Several employ tactile materials to echo the materiality of celluloid. That formal resonance was deliberate: curators say visual texture creates a conversation between analogue and digital practices.
For the filmmakers, the double bill offered practical benefits. Exhibition in a mixed program extended audience dwell time and encouraged post-screening discussion among critics and industry professionals. The programming choice therefore aligned with the curators’ aim to promote sustained critical engagement.
The festival will also spotlight advances in animation and interactive storytelling, organisers said. Immersive Enterprise Laboratories released a short documentary, The Science of Animation, filmed during a pop-up event at the Fleet Science Center. The film records a public-facing animation pipeline in which story, character and environment are developed in parallel rather than in separate, linear stages. The piece illustrates how collaborative workflows can shorten feedback loops and expose creative choices to audiences in real time.
The selection reflects curators’ intent to foreground experimental production models. The documentary focuses on technical tools and on-stage practices that enabled real-time iteration. It documents software frameworks, rapid prototyping methods, and workplace setups that supported simultaneous creative development.
From a methodological perspective, the film presents an evidence-based view of iterative design. The filmmakers show annotated pipelines and time-stamped streams of work to demonstrate how concurrent development alters decision points. The footage includes on-site interviews with technicians and animators describing version control practices and visual fidelity trade-offs.
Dal punto di vista del paziente is not applicable to this context, but the piece nonetheless emphasises user-centred testing. Audience interactions at the pop-up provided immediate qualitative feedback, which the filmmakers used to refine character motion and environmental cues during the event. The approach points to new models for participatory authorship and for reducing the lag between prototype and public response.
The pop-up demonstrated how real-time production can shorten the gap between prototype and public response. Organisers presented an integrated creative system that combined high-end workstations, motion capture and real-time rendering to let visitors shape content instantly.
The setup relied on HP Z Workstations driven by AMD Threadripper processors and accelerated by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell graphics. Real-time rendering and world-building used Unreal Engine, while surface and material workflows ran through Adobe Substance 3D and Maxon Cinema 4D. Character sculpting and detail work involved ZBrush, and body movement capture was provided by Vicon.
Facial animation and audio systems integrated tools from JALI Research alongside bespoke real-time audio processing. The configuration allowed attendees to scan materials, record performances and see immediate playback in animated scenes. A virtual guide, Ruby, led demonstrations and illustrated how non-specialists could interact with the pipeline.
From a creative-user perspective, the installation offered a practical example of participatory authorship. The platform reduced technical barriers and enabled iterative feedback between creators and audiences. The organisers said the approach points to new production models for studios, independent creators and live events.
The organisers said the approach points to new production models for studios, independent creators and live events. The festival is designed to encourage cross-disciplinary conversation between filmmakers, technologists and audiences.
Traditional cinematic craft will sit alongside emerging interactive pipelines. Whether through the nostalgic grain of 16mm in Davies Jr.’s debut or the live compositing on display in the animation pop-up, this edition of the New African Film Festival aims to showcase both heritage and innovation across African and diasporic storytelling. Curators say the programme seeks to strengthen professional networks, stimulate co‑production opportunities and surface techniques that could shorten development cycles for narrative and live formats.
From a creative-technology perspective, the event highlights practical workflows and new exhibition practices. Industry participants noted that early public testing at pop-ups can refine audience-facing tools and influence future commissioning models, offering a pathway for sustained collaboration between traditional film crafts and real-time production methods.