The African Film Festival will virtually present an array of award-winning shorts and full-length features from across Africa March 26-28. All programming is free.
Highlights include “You Will Die at Twenty,” a Sudanese feature which won the grand prize at the Amiens International Film Festival and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award at the Venice Film Festival, and “Baamum Nafi,” a Senegalese drama from filmmaker Mamadou Dia, who will participate in a livestreamed Q&A after the screening.
Now in its 15th year, the festival also will feature its celebrated “Eye on Youth” program, which will showcase shorts from Senegal, Mozambique and Egypt followed by a livestreamed Q&A with the films’ illustrators and animators.
“Independent films, especially those made in ‘developing countries,’ have a hard time reaching audiences,” Dia said. “It is, however, important that films, in this instance, made by Africans for Africans and the diaspora first, be seen in specialized venues like the African Film Festival. In such festivals, the filmmakers find a fine balance of prepared audience and newcomers to get the best discussions before and after the screenings. It is always a pleasure being part of the festival that is rooted in its communities (both academic and non-academic).”
Coordinated by Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, assistant dean in Arts & Sciences, the festival is sponsored by the Department of African and African American Studies and the Film and Media Studies program in Arts & Sciences, along with the African Students Association, with funding from the Washington University Women’s Society and the Missouri Arts Council. Saturday’s films are co-presented with the St. Louis Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.
For a complete schedule and to register for the screenings, visit africanfilm.wustl.edu.
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