This festival screens international features, documentaries and shorts by filmmakers from across Africa and the African diaspora.
Here are some 2019 highlights:
- Opening the festival is the original French-subtitled version of the Belgian-French feature film The Mercy of the Jungle (La Miséricorde de la Jungle) about a pair of lost Rwandan soldiers struggling to survive at the beginning of the Second Congo War. Rwandan director Joel Karekezi will be in attendance. Screening followed by musical performances.
- Tunisian writer and director Mahmoud Ben Mahmoud’s award-winning feature film Fatwa is about Brahim Nadhour, a divorced father residing in France, who returns to Tunisia after his son dies in a motorcycle accident. When he arrives, Brahim discovers the radicalization and transformation of his son and native land.
- The French-subtitled documentary Le Tribunal sur le Congo (The Congo Tribunal) by Swiss director Milo Rau examines the 20-year Congo War – also called the "Third World War" – which claimed six million lives.
- The French-subtitled documentary Dizzy Brains: Madagascar, Punk Land is about punk band The Dizzy Brains, who rose from the angry streets of Antananarivo in Madagascar.
- The French-subtitled South African documentary I Am Sheriff follows a young transgender man who travels throughout the mountain kingdom of Lesotho showing his film about gender identity.
- There are daily cocktails, African cuisine, performances and events at the Baobar at the Cinémathèque québécoise.
- The festival hosts two off-site French-language roundtables open to the general public: Rencontre Images de Femmes et diversité on April 9 (it will also be broadcast live on Facebook), and L’image de l’Afrique dans les médias on April 10 (advance registration required).