Film at Lincoln Center and African Film Festival, Inc. have announced the full lineup for the 33rd New York African Film Festival, running May 6–12 at FLC before continuing at additional New York venues through May 30.
The festival opens May 6 with the New York premiere of Erige Sehiri’s “Promised Sky,” which opened the 2025 Cannes Un Certain Regard program. The film follows an Ivorian pastor living in Tunisia whose home becomes a refuge for a young mother, a student, and an orphaned child. César Award nominee Aïssa Maïga and Laetitia Ky are both scheduled to attend the opening night Q&A.
The centerpiece is “The Eyes of Ghana,” directed by two-time Academy Award winner Ben Proudfoot and executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. The documentary follows 93-year-old Chris Hesse — personal cinematographer to Kwame Nkrumah — and filmmaker Anita Afonu as they race to recover more than 1,000 films long believed destroyed. The film won the Audience Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival.
Among the features: Imran Hamdulay’s debut “The Heart Is a Muscle,” which won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at 2025 Berlinale Panorama and was South Africa’s submission for Best International Feature at the 2026 Academy Awards; Angèle Diabang’s debut “So Long a Letter,” adapted from Mariama Bâ’s 1979 novel; Ema Edosio Deelen’s “When Nigeria Happens,” a dance drama that premiered at Locarno 2025; and Jihan’s “My Father and Qaddafi,” which won the Jury Prize at the Marrakech International Film Festival after premiering at Venice.
Two restorations receive their U.S. premieres: a 4K restoration of Férid Boughedir’s 1987 documentary “Caméra Arabe,” tracing politically engaged cinema in North Africa and the Middle East from the 1960s onward; and a 4K restoration of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra’s 1981 political satire “En Résidence Surveillée,” the only fiction feature by the director of “Afrique Sur Seine” (1955), the first film made entirely by Africans. Boughedir’s 1983 “Caméra d’Afrique,” covering the first two decades of sub-Saharan African auteur cinema, screens in a 2K restoration followed by an extended conversation with the director.
Additional world premieres include Gabriel Souleyka’s documentary “The Soul of Africa,” filmed in part at the 10th Festival of Black Divinities in Togo; and Aminata Drynie Bockarie’s short “Where the Water Meets Us,” on Bonthe Island’s history and climate threats to Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone. Idris Elba’s first short film, “Dust to Dreams” — set in a Lagos nightclub — screens as part of Shorts Program 2.
The festival also includes the North American premiere of “Rumba Royale,” set in 1959 Léopoldville, featuring Congolese musician Fally Ipupa in his first screen role; and the world premiere of David Mboussou’s “Afrotōpia,” a 128-minute fiction feature set in the Congo Basin.
A digital exhibition in the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center will present archival materials from NYAFF’s 36-year history, including interviews and photographs featuring Ousmane Sembène, Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror, Wole Soyinka, Miriam Makeba, and others. AFF’s archive holds approximately 3,000 film titles from more than 90 countries.
The festival opens May 1 with a Town Hall at the Africa Center, continues at Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem May 15–17, moves to BAM as FilmAfrica May 22–28 during DanceAfrica, and closes with an outdoor screening at St. Nicholas Park on May 30.
Tickets go on sale April 1 at 2pm ET. General admission is $19; an All-Access Pass is $89.
Full schedule: filmlinc.org