Mozambican filmmaker Ique Langa’s feature debut, "O Profeta," will have its national premiere in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, on 30 August 2026, followed by a further two weeks of theatrical exhibition at Nu Metro Maputo.
The premiere is being presented in connection with the 16th KUGOMA – Fórum de Cinema Moçambique, an annual film festival in Maputo, and the Museu do Cinema Moçambique, a project dedicated to documenting and preserving the country’s cinema history. The film’s team announced the release on 24 August, with the Associação dos Amigos do Museu do Cinema em Moçambique, the nonprofit organization behind the museum project, also involved. KUGOMA’s 2026 edition takes place in Maputo around the turn of August and September.
The extended cinema engagement is especially notable given Mozambique’s limited commercial exhibition infrastructure. The African Film Press (AFP) Box Office Registry (coming soon) currently verifies four screens at Nu Metro Maputo, operated by the Southern African cinema chain at Gloria Mall. The complex temporarily closed on 29 July 2026, leaving Maputo without an operating commercial cinema according to local reporting, before resuming regular screenings in August. AFP has yet to verify the current status of a separate cinema operation in neighboring Matola, and no national admissions or box-office revenue series has been recovered for Mozambique.
Shot in black and white over nine years in Manjacaze, a town in southern Mozambique, "O Profeta" follows Hélder, an evangelical pastor whose loss of faith leads him to seek help from traditional spiritual forces. He gains healing powers and new followers, but maintaining them requires increasingly severe sacrifices. The 94-minute Mozambique–South Africa–Qatar production uses a largely nonprofessional local cast led by Admiro De Laura Munguambe.
"O Profeta" had its world premiere in the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the Netherlands in January 2026, followed by its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films, presented by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, in April.
Munguambe won Best Actor at the African Film Festival of Tarifa-Tangier on 30 May, and the film returned to the festival circuit in August for its Swiss premiere in Open Doors Screenings at the Locarno Film Festival.
Historically, African films celebrated on the "prestige" international festival circuit often struggled to secure theatrical release at home. That long-standing tradition has begun to change.
The 30 August national premiere and subsequent two-week (possibly more) Nu Metro run for Langa's "O Profeta" bring the film home after its international circulation, while also giving a new Mozambican feature an unusually substantial engagement in one of the continent’s smallest currently documented commercial cinema markets.