We are delighted to be able to announce the films for what will be our 7th Galway African Film Festival.

Films will be screened at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media on the weekend of 23rd-25th May.

All films are FREE! Click here for your free brochure!

Please click here for directions to venue

Friday 23rd May

Opening Film:

5.30pm  Jonah (Director: Kibwe Tavares / UK/Tanzania / Short 18 mins)

Mbwana and his best friend Juma are two young men with big dreams. These dreams become reality when they photograph a gigantic fish leaping out of the sea and their small town blossoms into a tourist hot-spot as a result. But for Mbwana, the reality isn’t what he dreamed – and when he meets the fish again, both of them forgotten, ruined and old, he decides only one of them can survive.

6pm  The New World (Director: Jaap Van Heusden / Netherlands / Feature 85mins)

In the stark confines of Amsterdam airport, 39-year-old Mirte works as a cleaner for a detention facility where new asylum seekers are held for 10 days before being released. Troubled and wary, Mirte’s safe routine is shattered by the arrival of charismatic West African Luc. As the two damaged souls fence around one another, a mutual curiosity- possibly love – slowly begins to bloom – but both know that in 10 days everything will change. A film about loss, fleeing and love from an unexpected corner.

8pm  Half of a Yellow Sun (Director: Biyi Bandele / Nigeria/UK / Feature 111mins)

Talented novelist, playwright and screenwriter Biyi Bandele’s adaption of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, “Half of a Yellow Sun”. During the mid-to-late sixties, twin sisters Olanna (Thandie Newton) and Kainene (Anika Noni Rose) return to Nigeria after their education in England and they make decisions that shock their family. Olanna moves in with her lover, the ‘revolutionary professor’ Odenigbo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his houseboy Ugwu (John Boyega), while Kainene takes over the family interests and pursues a career as a businesswoman, falling in love with Richard (Joseph Mawle), an English writer. As the Igbo people struggle to establish Biafra as an independent republic, the sisters become caught up in the shocking violence of the Nigerian Civil War and a betrayal that threatens their family forever.

Cert 18

Saturday 24th May

IRISH PREMIERE

4pm  African Metropolis (Executive Producer: Steven Markovitz / Shorts 55mins)

african metropolis image African Metropolis is a compilation of six short films, set in six major African cities, a unique partnership towards new African cinema. The films from Abidjan, Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi tell urban tales about life in African metropolises. Over 50 percent of the continent’s total population now lives in cities and vital urban cultures are forming and transforming – fast, and with growing complexity. In African cinema, the shift is towards urban stories, with less focus on the traditional, rural Africa that dominated in the past. 6 Cities, 6 Directors, Six Films:

  • Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: To Repel Ghosts Directed by Philippe Lacôte
  • Cairo, Egypt: The Cave Directed by Ahmed Ghoneimy
  • Dakar, Senegal: The Other Woman Directed by Marie Ka
  • Johannesburg, South Africa: Berea Directed by Vincent Moloi
  • Lagos, Nigeria: The Line-Up Directed by Folasakin Iwajomo
  • Nairobi, Kenya: Homecoming Directed by Jim Chuchu

The African Metropolis Short Film Project is an initiative of the Goethe-Institut South Africa and executive producer Steven Markovitz, with support from Guaranty Trust Bank and the Hubert Bals Fund of International FilmFestival Rotterdam.

Presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut

5.15pm  Andalousie Mon Amour (Director: Mohammed Nadif / Morocco / Feature 86mins)

Saïd and Amine are two students from Casablanca dreaming of Europe. They end up in a small village in the North of Morocco. With the help of their schoolteacher, they leave for the European coast on a small boat but they are shipwrecked. The sea washes Amine back onto the coast of the village. Saïd is washed away on a Spanish beach. Andalusia seems strange to Saïd. Meanwhile, in the Moroccan village, Amine notices strange things happening…

7pm  Tey (Director: Alain Gomis / Senegal/France / Feature 86mins)

In a village outside Dakar, the gods or the stars, or destiny, have spoken: Satché must die by the end of the day. Until nightfall, the film follows him making his goodbyes to those around him; his family, his friends, his lover, his children and his wife. He soon finds himself set apart from those closest to him, in beautiful scenes that seek to show those elements of friendship, desire, sadness, affection and anger that are usually left unsaid.

8.30pm  Rags & Tatters (Director: Ahmad Abdalla / Eqypt / Feature 87mins)

His 2010 film Microphone foretold revolution; now Ahmad Abdalla explores post-revolutionary Egypt through the eyes of a fictional prisoner who escapes from jail only to find himself on the run in a country he no longer recognises. We are transported to the twilight alleyways of an Egypt on the fringe and rarely seen on film. Deliberately contemplative in both mood and tone, Rags & Tatters is absent of the typical adrenaline associated with films about revolution. What emerges instead is a deeply affecting portrait of the true price of change.

Sunday 25th May

5pm  Twaaga (Director: Cedric Ido / Burkina Faso/France / Short 30mins)

Burkina Faso in 1987 is a country in the throes of revolution. Manu, an eight-year-old who loves comics, tags along with Albert, his big brother. When Albert decides to undergo a magic ritual to become invincible, Manu realizes there are real powers to rival those of his comic-book superheroes.

Cert 15

Screening with:-

Kwaku Ananse (Director: Akosua Adoma Owusu / Ghana/Germany / Short 26mins)

The traditional West African fable of Kwaku Ananse is combined with the story of a young outsider named Nyan Koronhwea attending her estranged father’s funeral. Nyan’s father led two separate lives with two wives and two families – one in Ghana, one in the United States. Nyan’s ambivalence about her father’s double life is a reflection of a broader truth about the nature of our personal relationships.

6.15pm  Mother of George (Director: Andrew Dosunmu / USA/Nigeria / Feature 107mins)

At long last, handsome Ayodele Balogun, owner of a small Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn, will wed his beautiful fiancée, Adenike, and they will start a new life together in the United States. Their traditional Yoruba wedding culminates in a ceremony where Adenike is named for her yet-to-be-conceived son, George. But as the months pass without pregnancy, Ma George is torn between her Yoruba culture and her new life in America as she faces uncomfortable and unfamiliar choices in her struggle to save her marriage. Acclaimed director Andrew Dosumnu (Restless City) captures the nuances of this unique and fascinating culture by creating a beautiful, vibrant, and moving portrait of a couple whose joys and struggles are at once intimate and universal.

Cert 18

8.15pm  Forgotten Kingdom (Director: Andrew Mudge / Lesotho/USA / Feature 96mins)

IRISH PREMIERE

Atang leaves the slums of the big city to bury his estranged father in the remote, mountainous village where he was born. Befriended by an orphan herd-boy and stirred by memories of his youth, he falls in love with his childhood friend, Dineo, now a radiant young teacher. Through her, Atang is drawn to the mystical beauty and hardships of the people, and faces his own bittersweet reckoning.