32nd New York African Film Festival
May 7 — 31, 2025
The 32nd annual edition of the New York African Film Festival (NYAFF32) runs May 7-31, 2025 at Film at Lincoln Center, Maysles Documentary Cinema, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). This year Cinema Tropical is delighted to co-present four Latinx and Latin American films. Convened under the theme Fluid Horizons: A Shifting Lens of a Hopeful World, NYAFF32 honors the resilience of African youth and the forbearers that paved the way.
Despite the continent’s vast natural resources, many still face poverty, inequality, and political volatility. Climate change has further strained agriculture, often leading to interethnic conflict and youth emigration. Yet, African youth see only potential in their motherland, using storytelling to express their vision. Even when displaced, they carry the power of African culture, acting as ambassadors and spreading its stories across the globe.
Inspired by the veterans before them, this generation continues the legacy of African cinema as a tool for resistance, liberation, and celebration. To this effect, NYAFF32 presents over 50 contemporary and classic films from Africa and its diaspora, offering a rich and multidimensional reflection of African culture, history, and identity.
For tickets and more information visit:
https://africanfilmny.org/
‘Shorts Program 1: Notions of Home’
NWA (BLACK)
(Hans Augustave, 2024, USA, 20 min. In English, French, and Haitian with English subtitles)
Nwa is a candid, emotional coming-of-age film about Frantz, a first-generation Haitian-American boy, torn by the decision to get the haircut he knows his strict immigrant father would approve of, or a trendy cut connecting him to the Black American culture he’s been warned by his father not to embrace.
RUN WE LIKE
(Rhys Aaron Lewis, 2024, U.K., 13 min. In English. New York Premiere)
It’s the 2012 London Olympics and the whole world is going crazy for the fastest man on the planet: Usain Bolt. Everyone apart from Alvin, an awkward 14-year-old who hates sports and constantly disappoints his Jamaican father, Lester, an ex-athlete who can’t understand why his son is “so soft.” So when Alvin is unexpectedly nominated to represent his class in the upcoming school sports day, it could be his last chance to make his dad proud and prove that he can be just like Bolt.
Thursday, May 8 at 9:15pm and Friday, May 9 at 3pm at Film at Lincoln Center
‘Shorts Program 3: Centennial Legacies’
Marking a century of history, culture, and resistance, this short film program honoring the visionaries and movements that shaped the past and continue to inspire the future includes Lou de Lemos’s The Legend of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s It Was Four Years Ago, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s Ousmane Sembène: The Making of Ceddo, Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda’s The Draughtsmen Clash, and Lebert Bethune’s Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom.
THE LEGEND OF ARTURO ALFONSO SCHOMBURG
(Lou de Lemos, Puerto Rico/U.S., 1986, 25 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
This biography tells the story of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a Puerto Rican of African descent who dedicated his life to studying African history and collecting Black-related materials from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Africa. His collection forms the core of the collection found today at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research center of the New York Public Library.
Sunday, May 11 at 3:30pm and Monday, May 12 at 3pm at Film at Lincoln Center
THE SERPENT OF SHELMECA / LA SERPIENTE DE SHELMECA
(Laura Bermúdez, Honduras, 2023, 3 min. In Miskitu and Spanish with English subtitles)
*Preceding The Tree of Authenticity
The second most important rainforest in the Americas hides an archaeological secret of an ancient indigenous population, known today as Ciudad Blanca. Wildres Wood, the first biologist from the Miskitu ethnic group, embarks on a journey to the heart of the jungle to protect Honduras’ most important treasure for the world.
THE PLANET OF WATER
(Leonardo Gámez Gil, Mexico 2024, 3 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
*Preceding The Tree of Authenticity
In the near future, humanity—obsessed with saving water while destroying its own planet—faces a devastating environmental crisis. Humans begin to explore space in search of water, and in their absence, the Earth regenerates itself.
ARTE CONGO… ARTISTS JOURNEY ON THE CONGO COAST OF PANAMA
(Arturo Lindsay, 2024, USA, 68 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles)
Arte Congo...Artists Journey on the Congo Coast of Panama is a documentary film that depicts a unique "insider's" view of a new Afro-centric Panamanian art movement that was born at a metaphoric crossroad in the village of Portobelo, Panama when Congo elder Virgilio "Yaneca" Esquina, photographer/author Sandra Eleta and artist/cultural investigator/educator Arturo Lindsay met. Along with a group of artists from Portobelo and the Spelman College Summer Art Colony, they established the painting workshop of Taller Portobelo.
Friday, May 16 at 5:30pm at the Maysles Documentary Center
‘Shorts Program #1: The Ancestors Smile’
A captivating collection of shorts that explore the powerful connections between tradition, identity, and legacy through personal stories, myth, and memory.
PA’LANTE
(Karisma Jay, 2025, USA, 18 min. In English and Spanish with English subtitles. World Premiere)
In a world of endless victories on the track, PA’LANTE tells the story of Afro - Latina twin siblings who dominate every race except the most elusive one: navigating the complexities of being human.
Friday, May 16 at 8:30pm at the Maysles Documentary Center
AT ALL KOSTS
Joseph Hillel, 2025, Canada, 86 min. In French and Haitian Creole with English subtitles. U.S. Premiere)
At All Kosts offers an intimate look at a group of Haitian artists who use theater, dance, and music to resist the chaos of their times. Born after the Duvalier dictatorship and shaped by decades of political turmoil, natural disasters, and gang violence, they choose art as a lifeline and act of defiance. Centered around Port-au-Prince’s Festival Quatre Chemins, their stories blur the line between fiction and reality, transforming stages, streets, and sacred spaces into sites of resilience. Amid hunger, fear, and uncertainty, these performers bring forth another vision of Haiti—one of dignity, courage, and unrelenting creative power.
Sunday, May 18 at 3:30pm at the Maysles Documentary Center
KIDNAPPING, INC.
(Bruno Mourral, Haiti/France/Canada, 2024, 103 min. In Creole and French with English subtitles)
The son of a wealthy presidential candidate has just been kidnapped. The kidnappers are demanding a hefty ransom. Doc and Zoe are two amateur gangsters-and soccer freaks-who must deliver the young man to their ruthless boss. Impulsive Zoe accidentally kills the candidate's son. Faced with a terrible fate for killing their hostage,Doc and Zoe stumble upon Patrick and his nine-month-pregnant wife, Laura. Theyoung couple must, at all costs, catch a flight out of Haiti to give birth in the US to get citizenship for their baby. Patrick’s great misfortune is that he looks exactly like thesenator’s dead son. In the midst of a heated election and a Barça-Real classic match,Doc and Zoe find themselves at the center of a political conspiracy
GRANDMA NINETEEN AND THE SOVIET’S SECRET
(João Ribeiro, Portugal/Brazil/Mozambique, 2020, 94min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Adapted from the novel by esteemed Angolan author Ondjaki, this coming of age tale brings us into the multilayered world of Jaki, a young boy from a small coastal African village living in a cousin-filled house headed by his spunky grandmother Agnette. Jaki spends his days with best friends Pi and Charlita and they discover that a local construction site of a huge mausoleum guarded by Russians threatens to demolish their entire neighborhood. Their spirited efforts to foil this plan are met with the unanticipated involvement of a secretive Soviet.
MUEDA, MEMORY AND MASSACRE / MUEDA, MEMÓRIA E MASSACRE
(Ruy Guerra, Mozambique, 1979, 80 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)
Mueda, Memória e Massacre (Mueda, Memory and Massacre) depicts an anti-colonial work on memory: an annual theatrical re-enactment of the Mueda Massacre of June 16, 1960, which left over 600 peaceful demonstrators dead after Portuguese soldiers opened fire. Made by Ruy Guerra, a Portuguese-Brazilian director and screenwriter born in colonial Mozambique, the film is widely considered the nation’s first feature.
Monday, May 26, 3:45pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
‘Shorts Program 2: Mysteries of the Heart’
A collection of short films created by artists from Africa and the diaspora celebrate the intricacies of love. In as little as five minutes, these films open windows into worlds of the heart, from youthful aspiration to the regrets of old age, and from intimacies between adults to the complexities of family.
JEAN & I
(Mirta Desir, 2024, USA, 13 min. In English)
Michelle, a 10-year-old survivor of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, attempts to escape both her past and her new home when she learns that her "new" family is not what it seems.
LAND.SCAPE NOTES ON EXILE
(Berette S. Macaulay, 2025, U.S., France, Italy, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, 5 min. In English. New York Premiere)
A poetic journey of rediscovery that routes us through shifting landscapes and waterways is guided by narrative reflections of a seeker who is mystically guided by Oshun, the venerated orisha of water and destiny.
Wednesday, May 28 at 8:05pm at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
ECHOES OF THE LAKE
(Nico Muñoz, 2024, Argentina, 3 min. In Spanish with English subtitles)
On the shores of Lake Poopó in Bolivia, an ancient culture remains resilient in the face of climate change. In early September 2023 I set out on a journey to film a documentary for the ARTE network. During my visit I witnessed the gradual drying up of the Desaguadero river, which serves as the main tributary to Bolivia's second largest lake. This drying trend has occurred in recent years due to mining, agriculture and urban expansion along its course towards a lake that now exists only in memory. In a small community on the banks of what was once their source of life, 14 families of the Uru ethnic group remain, embodying the consequences of a world that demands more and more resources to sustain an ever-expanding way of life. It is difficult to imagine a world without mining and technology, but a world without water is simply impossible.
