This year, we've been more focused on building the tools you need to read Africa's screen industries — the African Film Press (AFP) Pipeline Registry (now at 410 projects tracked with another subtle facelift), the AFP Funding Desk, the AFP Co-Production Treaty Registry, the AFP Streaming & Infrastructure Tracker, AFP Dispatch, and an evolving archival chatbot.
Today, something different: AFP Play, a new strand of what we're referring to as "digital diversions" (we're intentionally avoiding the word "games"); though a few will seep into the real world.
First up: Logline.
What is Logline?
Logline presents a different set of five African films each day, five days a week. Players must identify the title of each one from a set of five different clues. Guess incorrectly, and another clue opens up — its country, its year, its director, and other telling details — until you name the film or run out of clues. The fewer clues you need, the sharper the round. Solve each one, and you build a daily streak, with a continental map that captures a player's growing collection of identified films by country, and a new set of five films resets each day.
Every film you encounter comes with a link to find where it's streaming on JustWatch and to its page on Letterboxd, so the moment a film catches you, go stream it (assuming it's available) or read more. Discovery doesn't stop at the guess.
The Premise
African cinema has a discovery problem. The films have always existed; the filmmakers are working; the stories are being told by any means necessary. The challenge is that the infrastructure for finding, knowing, and caring about those films has historically been thin: limited distribution, fragmented journalism and mainstream criticism, and an international festival circuit that surfaces a narrow band of the work being produced.
An industry without an informed, curious, and growing audience base remains perpetually dependent on external validation. Building that audience, particularly at home across the continent, requires more than access. It requires familiarity, and familiarity requires repeated, low-stakes encounters with the work.
Logline is designed to create those encounters. Each daily set draws from the full breadth of African cinema — films from across the continent and the diaspora, across decades, genres, languages, etc. Players will come upon canonical works alongside films that have received little international attention. The game makes no distinction between the celebrated and the overlooked. Both are simply African films, and all deserve to be known.
AFP Play — the Scope
Logline is the first in a series of digital diversions that AFP is developing as part of a broader interactive strand. Subsequent diversions will vary in format and complexity, and some will extend beyond the browser, requiring real-world engagement.
All are organized around the same core purpose: to cultivate curiosity about African cinema, build engaged audiences that reflect the diversity of stories, and make the act of learning about African films and filmmakers feel more like play than obligation.
Logline is free to play and is accessible on any device. Those who wish to preserve their progress and collection map can add an email address to sync their streak.
Of course, this is version 1.0. Anticipate changes to Logline over time, and new diversions added to the AFP Play suite.
For now, Logline is waiting for you, accessible on any device, here: https://africanfilmpress.com/afp-play/logline/