NYAFF, the New York African Film Festival, is back and this time it is bringing the cosmos with it. Now in its 33rd year, NYAFF runs May 6 through 12 at Film at Lincoln Center, before spreading across the city through the end of the month. Fourteen feature films and 25 short films make up a lineup that feels less like a program and more like a declaration.
This year’s NYAFF theme, “As the Stars Sow the Earth,” anchors the selection in something deeper than geography. The films gathered here trace a lineage of artists and leaders who imagine a different relationship to land, memory, and power, particularly in regions that have long been exploited and underrepresented on screen. The result is a festival that feels urgent without being heavy, expansive without losing focus.
Opening night raises the NYAFF bar
NYAFF opens May 6 with the New York premiere of Promised Sky, directed by Erige Sehiri. The film follows Marie, an Ivorian pastor living in Tunisia, whose home quietly becomes a refuge for a young mother, a student weighed down by family expectations, and a child who survived a shipwreck. It is a tender and precise drama about makeshift family, displacement, and survival. It opened the 2025 Cannes Un Certain Regard program and stars César Award nominee Aïssa Maïga alongside Laetitia Ky, both expected to attend the screening in person.
The centerpiece film carries its own remarkable story. The Eyes of Ghana, directed by Ben Proudfoot and executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, follows 93-year-old photographer Chris Hesse as he races against time and his own impending blindness to recover more than 1,000 films he shot documenting the birth of Ghanaian independence. The films were believed destroyed. They were not. What they contain could rewrite history.
The NYAFF lineup is built for discovery
Beyond the marquee selections, NYAFF is rich with premieres that reward curiosity. Rumba Royale, receiving its North American premiere, drops audiences into 1959 Léopoldville, where a young photographer falls into the charged world of a legendary nightclub as colonial rule unravels around it. Congolese music star Fally Ipupa makes his acting debut in what unfolds as a captivating historical thriller.
Dust to Dreams, the short film directorial debut of Idris Elba, centers on a Lagos nightclub where a terminally ill owner must pass her legacy to a daughter who never asked for it. The return of a long-absent father complicates everything. It is a compact, emotionally layered piece that suggests Elba has serious instincts behind the camera.
Two classic restorations add essential historical depth to NYAFF’s program. Férid Boughedir’s 1987 documentary Caméra arabe, now in 4K, charts the rise of politically engaged cinema across North Africa and the Middle East. His 1983 film Caméra d’Afrique, restored in 2K, documents the first two decades of sub-Saharan African auteur cinema. Boughedir will be present for extended conversations following both screenings.
NYAFF beyond Lincoln Center
NYAFF does not stop at 65th Street. A Town Hall at the Africa Center on May 1 kicks things off. Screenings continue at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem from May 15 to 17, and at BAM under the name FilmAfrica from May 22 to 28 during DanceAfrica. The month closes with an outdoor screening at St. Nicholas Park on May 30.
A digital exhibition at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center will surface rarely seen archival material from the festival’s history, including footage and photographs featuring Ousmane Sembène, Miriam Makeba, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and others who helped shape the festival’s first three decades.
Tickets go on sale April 1 at 2 p.m. ET, with prices starting at $14 for Film at Lincoln Center members. An all-access pass is available for $89, with a student rate of $65.
