The 30th annual New York African Film Festival (NYAFF) returns to Lincoln Center on May 10 with a lineup of more than 50 screenings and artist talks. This year’s films range from dramas to animated shorts to custom documentaries, and many works will make their US debut at NYAFF.
The festival will open with Moussa Sène Absa Xale (2022), which was Senegal’s selection for the International Feature Film category of the Oscars this year. The film concludes a three-part trilogy created by Absa to center women’s experiences. In this final work, a 15-year-old girl seeks freedom from her abusive uncle.
THE cast and crew are from Senegal, and the film is shot on a beach in Dakar that Absa frequented as a child. (Absa, 65, has previously used French and Canadian production teams for his films.) The director will hold a post-screening Q&A and talk on migration on May 13.
The festival’s flagship film is Hyperlink (2022), a multi-part project created by Mzonke Maloney, Nolitha Mkulisi, Julie Nxadi and Evan Wigdorowitz. The work is divided into four short films, each of which tells a different story that highlights the power of social media on human relationships.
Other highlights from this year’s NYAFF include Ota Benga (2022), a six-minute animated short from Chadrack Banikina and Cecilia Zoppelletto that delves into the life of the film’s namesake. In 1904, 21-year-old Benga was abducted from the Congo, trafficked and forced to participate in a exposure at the Bronx Zoo in 1906. NYAFF marks the film’s world premiere.
In lighter subjects, Fatou Cissé explores the life of her famous filmmaker father in Tribute from a daughter to her father: Souleymane Cissé (2022), and Ottis Ba Mamadou tells the story of an unemployed husband financially dependent on his wife in the comedy-drama tooth pour tooth (2022).
“The New York African Film Festival was founded to counter the voiceover where Africans were spoken about in dark images,” said Mahen Bonetti, who founded the New York African Film Festival in 1993. Hyperallergic. “And to provide a place where the seventh art could become a weapon for us to reclaim our voices, reclaim our images and add layers to the narrative.”
Bonetti is now the executive director of the largest African Film Festival, which offers year-round programs nationwide. The New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center will run through May 16.
