Films We Loved At The 2026 New York African Film Festival [RECAP]
The 33rd New York African Film Festival gave a month-long look into the storytelling of Diaspora filmmakers. These were our standouts!
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When it comes to telling the stories of our roots, there’s no better place to start than Africa. Even though the widespread diaspora over time has often made us feel more separated by our diverse upbringings, the truth is that Black American culture has way more in common with our African brothers and sisters than we think.
It’s why we thought it’d be a great idea to hit up the New York African Film Festival for the month of May. Now in its 33rd year, the annual NYAFF celebration is a pillar in showcasing the full breadth of our global culture through the cinematic lens of entertainment.
From Manhattan and Harlem to BAM in Brooklyn, we dived deep into a wide selection of documentaries, short films, anniversary screenings, stateside debuts and premiere events complimented further by insightful Q&A presentations.
RELATED: NYAFF 2026 Opening Night Review: Promised Sky Hits Home
Following the Opening Night screening of Promised Sky via Film at Lincoln Center, the festival took a detour uptown for a weekend of screenings at the Maysles Documentary Center Cinema in Harlem. Then it was off to the BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn for a week before closing out back in Harlem at Cafe Melo for a satisfying selection of shorts.
This year specifically was highlighted by a series of rich moments, including the attendance of renowned Tunisian filmmaker Ferid Boughedir for screenings of two restored films in his catalog, a screening of Mississippi Masala to honor filmmaker Mira Nair given her son’s recent rise as Mayor of New York City and an astounding amount of burgeoning filmmakers who each made NYAFF the latest stop on their debut film festival tours.
From a festival that brought more than 100 films from over 30 countries across Africa and its Diasporas, we managed to screen as many as we could and came up with a list of standout features we won’t soon forget. Keep an eye out as many will be screening across the globe in the near future!
Peep our official selections below from the 2026 New York African Film Festival:
The Eyes of Ghana (2025)
This captivating Obamas-produced doc by Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot is an eye-opening feature on the power in preservation. The prime focus on documentarian Chris Hesse, from capturing the renowned Kwame Nkrumah as his personal cinematographer during a revolutionary time in African independence to decades later being the key in restoring a long-lost archive of Ghanaian films, is the core of this love story to Ghana.
