The 21st edition of the New African Film Festival (NAFF) kicks off in one week on Friday, March 14! Presented by AFI and Africa World Now Project, the festival brings the vibrancy of African filmmaking from all corners of the continent and across the diaspora to the Washington, DC, area. Featuring 29 films from 19 countries, this year’s festival opens with NO CHAINS NO MASTERS, an epic historical drama that follows an enslaved father and daughter as they race to freedom in 18th century Mauritius. The festival closes with WHERE THE WIND COMES FROM, a rollicking road trip filled with surreal flourishes and warm humor from first-time feature filmmaker Amel Guellaty, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Get your tickets now!
 
Not sure what to watch? Let our programmers guide you through this year's lineup with their picks!
 
Mwiza Munthali, Co-Founder, New African Film Festival and Africa World Now Project
NO CHAINS NO MASTERS
NO CHAINS NO MASTERS makes us ponder the choices we make — and those we do not make — to be free in our individual lives and in society in general. The film exposes us to a country rarely seen on screen, Mauritius, with its dramatic tale of the plight and fight for freedom of enslaved people in the 1700s.
 
Screening March 14 & 18
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HOW TO BUILD A LIBRARY
Often, we see a library as just a repository of books. What this documentary, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, shows us is that the library is a bank of a community’s knowledge, culture, history, present and future. If done right, a library can be the glue that binds together all sectors of society.
 
Screening March 19 & 25
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THE VILLAGE NEXT TO PARADISE
The first Somali film to screen at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival brings us the simple hopes and dreams of a family living in the desert country, providing a different image of the country than what is typically shown in the news. We get to see a sensitive and empathetic story of a father and son, a sister and brother, as they try to build a better future for their family.
 
Screening March 22 & 24
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Judith Mbuya, Co-Founder, New African Film Festival and Founder, afrikafé
THE EMPTY GRAVE
As a native of Tanzania with family ties in the city of Songea, THE EMPTY GRAVE hits close to home. As if the brutal colonial past itself was not shameful enough, the German government’s bureaucratic refusal to hand over the stolen human remains of Songea Mbano, the beheaded resistance leader of the 1905 Maji Maji War against German occupation, to his rightful descendants is beyond frustrating; it is downright infuriating. Personal feelings aside, directors Cece Mlay and Agnes Lisa Wegner (from Tanzania and , respectively) have done a solid job in crafting this historical and contemporary narrative of the pursuit for restorative and reparative justice against the backdrop of the enduring legacy of colonialism and racism. The documentary also highlights a parallel struggle for the Kaaya family as they seek to repatriate the missing remains of their beloved ancestor — Mangi Lobulu Kaaya, who was a chief in northern Tanzania — from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The ongoing story serves as a bitter reminder of the inhumane, colonial-era atrocities that are further perpetuated by collections of stolen artifacts, as well as human skulls and other body parts used for racial “scientific research,” archived in museums and universities in western countries. For the aggrieved families, the glaring absence of justice is an open wound that stands in the way of their right to properly bury, mourn and honor their ancestors with dignity and tradition in order to bring about healing and closure for this particular generational trauma.
 
Screening March 15 & 21
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Abbie Algar, Director of Programming
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
If, like me, you appreciate impeccably crafted movies that tackle dark material and sensitive subject matter with humor, visual flair and a sense of the absurd — all without losing sight of our shared humanity — ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL is the film for you! Like many cinematic greats, the film starts out with a dead body — in this case it is that of Uncle Fred, discovered by his niece Shula (Susan Chardy) on the side of the road as she drives home from a fancy-dress party clad in an ensemble that can only be described as Missy-Elliot-meets-Afrofuturist-folk-law-showgirl. Yes, this movie starts with a bang. Without giving too much away, what then unfolds, as Shula’s extended family converges for a period of mourning, is a surreal journey into the heart of a middle-class Zambian family and the dark secrets that lie within. Like filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s 2017 breakout I AM NOT A WITCH, this film delves deep into the conflict between tradition and modernity in contemporary Zambian society, between the expectations placed on women and the ways in which, even in a matriarchal society, the patriarchy is an undeniable force. The film’s visual compositions, as executed by Colombian cinematographer David Gallego (EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, WAR PONY), and remarkable sound design, as crafted by Olivier Dandré, should be enough to convince anyone to see this on the big screen. But beyond its technical impressiveness, this is also a film of ideas and intellectual prowess, proving that Nyoni, who won the Un Certain Regard prize for Best Director at Cannes in 2024, is one of the most original new voices in world cinema.
 
Screening March 15 & 20
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Josh Gardner, Senior Film Programmer & PR Manager
WHERE THE WIND COMES FROM
Defying expectations of Arab and North African cinema, first-time feature filmmaker Amel Guellaty has crafted a crowd-pleasing road trip comedy that premiered to rave reviews at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival this past January. But do not mistake its humor for an absence of substance. The film engages with contemporary issues of class, religion and politics in Tunisia with impressive visual flourishes that bring the characters’ daydreams to life. This is a special film that deserves to be seen on the big screen!
 
Screening March 27
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Javier Chavez, Film Programmer
SUDAN, US
The ongoing civil war in Sudan, following a coup that toppled a dictatorship, has left the Sudanese people in atrocious conditions — but their struggle for a brighter future still burns brightly, as documentarian Hind Meddeb captures in this moving documentary. The poetry and resistance from the collective of young activists she follows is utterly beautiful and even uplifting. The civil war is just one of the many catastrophes unfolding across the globe, but it is important to bear witness to it nonetheless. Seeing the Sudanese resistance in this film gives me hope that a better future can indeed be attained.
 
Screening March 22 & 24
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