Seytou Africa, a Paris festival devoted to African and Afro-diasporic documentary cinema, will hold its ninth edition from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 September 2026. Screenings will take place at Cinéma La Clef and Reflet Médicis, two independent cinemas in Paris's Latin Quarter, with an additional conversation at Transplantation, an Afro-diasporic cultural space in the city's 19th arrondissement.
Organized by the Paris association Baatou Africa, the 2026 edition takes "Women Seeking" ("Femmes en quête") as its theme. Its ten films are directed or co-directed by women and consider searches for missing people, obscured family histories, cultural memory and lives left out of conventional historical records. The programme includes documentaries, fiction, hybrid film and moving-image poetry, accompanied by discussions, performances and a closing reading. The City of Paris has awarded Baatou Africa a €3,000 operating grant for its 2026 film activities.
The festival opens at Cinéma La Clef on 4 September with "The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for Mabel Dove" by Ghanaian-Nigerian artist and filmmaker Nnenna Onuoha. The 15-minute ciné-roman follows a young woman searching for Mabel Dove, the Ghanaian journalist and political figure whose writing and life have been partly lost in colonial archives.
The opening programme also includes "Seeking Mavis Beacon," Jazmin Jones's investigation into the Haitian-born model whose image became internationally recognizable as the face of the "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" software. The film considers digital identity, privacy, artificial intelligence and the use of a real woman's image in the technology business. Seytou Africa bills the screening as its French premiere, with Jones, producer Guetty Felin and other members of the film team expected to attend.
On Saturday 5 September, Jones and musician and visual artist GYSTERE, also known as Adrien Peskine, will lead a conversation at Transplantation on native land, Afrofuturism and diasporic life. The programme then moves to Reflet Médicis for four films: Johanna Makabi's "Motherland," Natasha Craveiro's "Pirinha," Fagamou Fama Ndiaye's "Concrete Moves" and Tamara Dawit's "Finding Sally."
"Motherland" follows an African American ballerina encountered by Makabi in the New York City subway and her relationship with migration, family origin and dance. The 25-minute France–United States production had its world premiere at the 2026 New York African Film Festival.
"Concrete Moves," a 12-minute Senegalese film in Wolof and French, draws on Ndiaye's childhood memory of encountering a snake during a school visit to the Les Mamelles lighthouse in Dakar, Senegal. The film is also part of the 2026 Open Doors programme at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.
"Finding Sally," Dawit's 78-minute Ethiopian-Canadian documentary, reconstructs the history of an aunt who joined the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and disappeared during the political violence that followed Ethiopia's 1974 revolution.
The final day, Sunday 6 September, is curated by W XOOL, a volunteer-run Afro-feminist film festival founded in France in 2020 for work by Black women and non-binary filmmakers. Its four-film selection comprises "Embrasure" by Victoria Neto, "Mirror Mirror" by South African filmmaker Sandulela Asanda, "Pearls" by Aude Konan and "Manman Chadwon" by Gwladys Gambie and Klēlo.
Seytou Africa will close with a reading by author and podcaster Douce Dibondo.
Visit Seytou Africa for full details.