The annual New African Film Festival (NAFF) wraps up this week with a string of thought-provoking and entertaining films at the AFI Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland. The festival, which ran from March 17 to 30 screened 30 films from 22 countries representing all corners of the diaspora.
Mwiza Munthali is a co-founder of the festival and enjoys speaking to people between screenings. He says that the film festival has had a profound impact on the region, including Ward 4 in Washington and the Silver Spring community.
“It helps the community to be exposed to African culture, all the stories of the continent and the African Diaspora,” Munthali says. “It gives a more complete picture of the continent, because people don’t see the continent in its full breadth especially culturally. So, that’s one reason why we even started doing the festival is to have a wider exposure of African culture but also so the filmmakers could have wider exposure.”
The movies span a wide variety of topics and themes — some being narrative feature-length films and others being captivating documentaries. They also spanned a multitude of languages like English, French, Swahili, Amharic, Fula, Krio, Arabic, West African and Nigerian Pidgin.
The festival premiered six films and held multiple Q&A sessions with the filmmakers, allowing the audience to speak directly to the creators. “The Honeymoon,” one of the films screened at NAFF, will be officially released on Friday. (See “Review: When a Honeymoon Turns Into a Girls’ Trip, Mischief Follows,” below.)
Other notable works at the festival were “Xale,” which was a 2023 Oscar selection from Senegal; “Super Eagles ’96,” which documents the Nigerian national football team; and “A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cisse,” which was an official selection at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
Munthali also explained that the founders originally hosted the festival at Vision Cinema in D.C., but it closed so they moved to the AFI. He is looking forward a big turnout for the festival’s 20th anniversary next year so that African films can continue to be shown to an even larger audience. For those interested in attending the festival next year, the AFI sells all-access passes that grant admission to every film.
In addition to being home to NAFF, the American Film Institute hosts other events throughout the year. The theater is running Anime Classic until April 26, showing some of the most important and influential films of this Japanese genre. Films like “Akira” (1988) or “Ghost in the Shell” (1995) are a couple films from this genre that were shown at the theater.
Lloyd Davis is a reporter for HUNewsService.com.
