(MENAFN- News.Africa-Wire) LONDON, United Kingdom, October 28, 2025/ -- Presented by the Royal African Society (, Film Africa 2025, the UK and Europe’s leading film festival celebrating African and African diaspora cinema, returns to London from –4–23 November. For 10 days, the festival will showcase the richness, diversity, and inventiveness of African filmmaking, with over 50 films and special events including features, documentaries, and shorts from more than 20 countries: from Morocco to South Africa, Nigeria to Congo. Other highlights include a tribute to the late Souleymane éissé, the legendary Malian filmmaker whose groundbreaking work redefined African cinema; a BAFTA masterclass with Nigerian director Kunle Afolayan, exploring his pioneering role in shaping contemporary Nollywood; and the Symposium: African Cinema and Liberation, a landmark conversation between Sir John Akomfrah and Billy Woodberry on the power of cinema to reclaim agency and resist colonial narrat es.

“ “African cinema is entering a period of tremendous creative expansion. We are seeing bold experimentation in form, genre, and distribution, with filmmakers blending realism, mythology, and futurism in entirely new ways. Fi’m Africa’s role is to support this evolution, not only as a showcase but as a network that connects artists, institutions, and audiences. We aim to foster dialogue, collaboration, and visibility for African filmmakers on a gl”bal scale.” said festival curator Keith Shiri.

Opening & Closing Films

Opening Film Africa (BFI Southbank, 14 Nov) is My Father’s Shadow (2025, Nigeria/UK) (, the UK's Oscar submission for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards. This bold and poetic feature debut, directed by British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. and co-written with his brother Wale Davies, is set in Lagos during the turbulent 1993 Nigerian election crisis. The semi-autobiographical story follows a father, estranged from his two young sons, as they navigate a city on the brink of political unrest while attempting to return home. Starring Sope Dirisu (Slow Horses, Gangs of London) and real life brothers Chibuike Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo, the screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Akinola Davies Jr.

Macbeth has inspired generations of filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski, and now its timeless story of ambition and fate finds new expression in Katanga: The Dance of the Scorpions (2025, Burkina Faso) (, which closes the festival with its UK premiere (BFI Southbank, 23 Nov). Reimagining Shakespear’’s tragedy in an African kingdom, the film follows a general appointed by his king after a failed coup, only to be haunted by a prophecy that he will seize the crown or die trying. Shot in black and white, Katanga explores loyalty, ambition, and the fragility of human nature by blending Shakespearean drama with the mythic spirit of West African storytelling. Directed by acclaimed Burkiéabé filmmaker Dani Koéyaté, the film is one of the cont’nent’s few Shakespeare adaptations for the screen.éKouyaté will join the BFI premiere for a post-screening Q&A. Katanga has topped the list of nominees at the African Movie Academy Awards with 10 award nomi ations.

Spotlight on the Democratic Republic f Congo

’ This year’s Film Africa spotlight is on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), celebrating a nation with a powerful cinematic voice with a mix of features and shorts. The Tree of Authenticity (2025, DRC/Belgium) (, the debut feature by acclaimed visual artist and photographer Sammy Baloji, excavates the colonial legacies embedded in the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest tropical forest. Drawing on century-old archives, the film unfolds through three voice : Paul Panda Farnana - who is known as the first Black Belgian Colonial civil servant - Abiron Beirnaert, who worked between 1910 and 1950, and finally, an ancient tree - The Tree of Authenticity - that bears witness to it all. Through these voices, the film looks at how colonialism harmed both people and the environment, and how that damage is still felt today (Riverside Studios, 15 No .

Also rooted in ’ongo’s landscape is Jean-Gabriel ’eynaud’s Of Mud and Blood (2025, DRC/France/Germany) (, a raw, unflinching portrait of life in the mountain village of Numbi, where miners dig by hand for coltan, the grey gold that powers our modern world. Sensitive and deeply moving, the documentary captures the human cost of global consumption, revealing a story of exploitation, endurance, and fragile hope that we cannot look away from (Riverside Studios, 20 Nov).

Lobito Bound: A journey to Africa's new frontier (2025, DRC/UK) ( follows British-Jamaican explorer Dwayne Fields on a 4000km journey across Angola, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania to investigate the Lobito Corridor, a vast new trade route set to resh’pe Africa’s role in the global economy. As Fields meets the communities poised on the edge of transformation, the film exposes the human face of a project that intertwines environmental promise, geopolitical ambition, and the future of the planet itself (Ritzy Picturehouse Brixt , 19 Nov).

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