Continuing Akoroko’s year-end 2025 African cinema analysis series, what follows is a report that Premium subscribers received a week ago. It draws from a comprehensive audit of over 4,000 Akoroko documents, capturing African screen activity from late 2022 through December 2025.
Much global industry trade coverage has looked at African cinema via the lens of “potential” — a perpetual “emerging market” standing on the precipice of a “breakthrough.”
What follows is a map of ten “alternative” narratives currently defining African screen cultures as being in complicated, sometimes messy, but always vibrant conversations amongst themselves, in an ongoing process of self-definition.
1. The “Female Gaze” is Not a Trend, It’s the Canon
The data shows that the rise of women filmmakers is not a recent phenomenon or a response to global trends, but a core and long-standing feature of African cinema. From the pioneering work of Thérèse Sita-Bella, Sarah Maldoror, Safi Faye, to the contemporary flex of several filmmakers continent-wide, women have consistently shaped Africa’s screen language. The last several years have seen women producers establish clear footprints, while relatively newer faces are building momentum with short-form work, continuing to expand the field.
I could list names, but I won’t remember them all, and I don’t want anyone to feel left out.
This influence extends beyond directing and producing. At the influential programming and curatorial level, African women shape selection and visibility across major platforms, from Toronto to Berlin and Rotterdam, alongside continental festivals including Durban, AFRIFF, and Cinefemfest.
In sales and distribution, African women are defining routes to market.
And in journalism and criticism, I’d be remiss not to mention my African Film Press (AFP) business partner Jennifer Ochieng’s single-handed work at Sinema Focus, a platform that anchors screen reporting across East Africa.
Women have been central to shaping the continent’s screen culture. Akoroko’s newsletters are filled with stories of women-led initiatives, festivals, and productions, established and emerging. The narrative here is one of continuance, not arrival. African cinema, in many ways, has always been a woman’s cinema, as Ousmane Sembène himself recognized.
2. We Are Not a Monolith
A key portion of the discourse revolves around the complex, evolving, and sometimes contentious relationship between continental and diaspora filmmakers and screen professionals more broadly. This is not a simple story of return or collaboration, but a nuanced dialogue about identity, belonging, authenticity, and creative ownership. The narrative is one of a transnational identity in constant negotiation.
3. The Past is Present
African cinema continues to be deeply engaged in a project of historical reckoning. A significant number of newsletters deal with themes of colonialism, decolonization, and restitution, led by Mati Diop’s “Dahomey,” which follows the return of looted royal artifacts to Benin. That well-documented work is still the most prominent example — an indication of how much remains to be explored across different countries, cultures, genres — but it’s part of a larger trend that extends beyond the screen. This is a cinema that insists on confronting the past as a force that shapes the present. The narrative is one of active, ongoing decolonization via the cinematic frame.
4. The Archive is Alive
Subsequently, there is a deep and growing engagement with the archive as a living source of contemporary creative inspiration and political intervention. Filmmakers are using archival footage, historical photographs, and oral histories to challenge official narratives, resurrect forgotten histories, and create new forms of cinematic expression. This is a cinema that is in active dialogue with its own history and the history of the continent.
5. The Kids Are Not Entirely Alright
Coming-of-age stories and narratives capturing the lives of the youth are a dominant theme across the films documented in the newsletters. These are often urgent, sometimes harrowing stories of young people navigating the world’s youngest continent in flux. They wrestle with migration, urbanization, political instability, and the search for identity in a world of limited opportunities. The narrative is one of African youth as the primary site of both societal pressure and potential transformation.
6. The City as a Character
African cinema is, for all intents and purposes, an overwhelmingly urban cinema: Lagos, Nairobi, Durban, Dakar, Cairo, Tunis, Luanda, Accra, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa — and not just as settings, but as dynamic, complex characters, both in fiction and reality, in their own right. They challenge a persistent, incomplete, global understanding, moving beyond narrowly defined images to explore the vibrant, contradictory, and even futuristic nature of African urban life. This narrative is one of the African city as a crucible of change.
7. DIY or Die
In the face of well-documented systemic challenges — lack of funding, infrastructure, and government support, etc — an under-appreciated narrative of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism thrives. Industry professionals are not waiting for permission, even funding, or the “right” moment; they are building their own ecosystems from the ground up. The narrative here is one of resilience with ingenuity and a rejection of dependency.
8. The Rise of African Genre Cinema
African cinema is, dare I say, breaking free from the confines of the social realism that has long dominated style and structure since the days of the post-colonial pioneers. I’m hesitant to refer to it as an explosion of genre filmmaking, though directors are embracing horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and thrillers to explore complex social and political themes in new and innovative ways. To be sure, they are not just imitating Western genre formalism, but are instead indigenizing, as it were, infusing them with local cosmologies, mythologies, and political concerns.
9. The Power of the Collective
In a continent where individual success is often precarious, there is a strong emphasis on community and collective action. This is reflected in the rise of filmmaker collectives, cross-border co-productions, and regional and pan-African initiatives. The narrative describes either an increased recognition of solidarity or a revitalization of forms of solidarity that once operated as a default strategy for survival and growth. The belief is that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that the future of African cinema depends on building a strong, interconnected continental ecosystem.
10. The Politics of Multilingualism
Language is a key site of creative and political struggle in African cinema. Filmmakers are increasingly choosing to work in indigenous languages, whether in defiance of colonial linguistic legacies or as a practical decision to speak directly to specific local audiences. This goes beyond striving for authenticity. The narrative is arguably one of linguistic diversity materializing as a form of cultural and political resistance.
In the end, these narratives are not new. Maybe what’s changed is the volume and the visibility.
The work is louder now, harder to ignore. But was it ever quiet? Djibril Diop Mambéty told us three decades ago, just before he passed away: “Africa is immensely rich in cinematic potential. It is good for the future of cinema that Africa exists.”
He wasn’t talking about potential as a promise deferred. He was talking about capacity that already exists.
“Oral tradition is a tradition of images. What is said is stronger than what is written; the word addresses itself to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema.”
The creative rationale — it was and still is all there. What remains are the material challenges that an enterprising, resilient industry professional body is increasingly solving in its own way, on its own terms.terms.
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