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I don't typically do predictions lists. They're fun, I guess. But they're also a trap. You either look prescient or you don't. And either way, the list can overshadow the actual conversation about the films. But I thought I'd join the international film media Cannes 2026 predictions circus with my own list, given that none of the others have a particular African focus. As we head into the back half of the week, the April 9th lineup announcement is exactly 14 days away. So I decided to give it a try. Here's my first ever Cannes African Films predictions list. **A few ground rules on how I built it** The primary source is the African Film Pipeline Registry, which I've been building and maintaining through African Screen Intelligence (ASI). It tracks films in active development, production, and post-production across the continent and diaspora. For this exercise, I'm drawing on the registry's data on stage of completion, funding profile, filmmaker festival pedigree, and pre-festival sales activity to identify which films are closest to being ready. The registry is not a perfect instrument. There are almost certainly films in post-production right now that haven't crossed my radar. But it's the most systematic picture I have. Where relevant, I've supplemented that with what's circulating in trusted trade press and across predictions lists for any additional context I may not already have. I'm also working with a historical Akoroko–Cannes baseline I compiled two years ago and continue to maintain. What that baseline suggests is that between 1946 and 2024, roughly 81 African feature films screened at Cannes across all sections — about one per year on average, though the distribution is anything but even. The 2020s are already the most productive decade in that working baseline, with at least 23 films across just four editions. I tracked seven features during last year's festival: three in competition (Eagles of the Republic, La Petite Dernière, The History of Sound), three in Un Certain Regard (My Father's Shadow, Aisha Can't Fly Away, C.L. Prami), and one in Directors' Fortnight (Indomitables). Based on my historical baseline, seven is close to the ceiling of what a typical recent edition produces. Five to seven is the realistic range. I built this list with that in mind. One more thing: not every film on this list will make it. Some may not be ready. Some may go to Venice or Toronto instead. A couple of these directors will have already been in conversation with Cannes programmers for months, and a couple probably haven't. This is a predictions list. I'm making educated guesses based on the best information I have right now and justifying each claim. **The Main Seven** **1. La Más Dulce (Strawberries) — Laïla Marrakchi — Morocco/France/Spain/Belgium** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard (competition as stretch possibility). Marrakchi debuted her first feature, Marock, in Un Certain Regard in 2005 — which means she's already in Cannes' institutional memory as a returning filmmaker. La Más Dulce follows a group of Moroccan women who travel to Andalusia for seasonal farm work and face exploitation and abuse. Shot in Huelva last April with cinematographer Tristan Galand (who shot Suleiman's Story, the jury prize winner at Cannes UCR 2024). Lead performances from Nisrin Erradi, Hajar Graigaa, and Fatima Attif. Lucky Number is handling sales. This is the African story I'd put at the highest probability of making the official selection. **2. Clarissa — Ery Nchukwu Asiri — Nigeria** Stage: Late stage / appears festival-ready. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. The Asiri brothers' debut, A Moody Christmas (This Is My Desire), premiered at Berlinale 2014 in the Forum section, later released theatrically by Janus Films. Neon acquired worldwide rights to Clarissa — a contemporary reimagining of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, relocated to Lagos, shot on 35mm — with a cast that includes Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Ayo Edebiri, and Toheeb Jimoh. Of note: Neon has won six consecutive Palme d'Or at Cannes, from Parasite in 2019 through It Was Just an Accident in 2025. Production was funded by Africa-based institutions — Cannex Creations Inc., Afreximbank, and MBO Capital — with no European co-production in the stack made public at this time. That's unusual for a film with this kind of Cannes potential, and probably why it hasn't appeared on many other predictions lists. **3. People of Solitude — Tariq Teguia — Algeria** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Teguia's features have competed at Venice twice: Rome Rather Than You in the Horizons section in 2006, and Inland in competition in 2008, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. Zanj Revolution won the Grand Jury Prize at Entrevues Belfort in 2013. The Doha Film Institute backed People of Solitude in its 2025 Spring Grants post-production cycle and selected it for Qumra 2026 in the Work in Progress Feature Narrative section. He has never screened at Cannes. The complication is timing — Qumra's Work in Progress label this month means the Cannes 2026 window looks tighter than it would for a locked film. The story follows a smuggler, a paleoanthropologist, and a man on a rescue mission who cross paths in the Sahara. **4. I'm Coming for You! — Cyrielle Raingou — Cameroon/France** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Raingou's debut documentary, Le Spectre de Boko Haram, won the Tiger Award at Rotterdam 2023 — the festival's top prize, and the first time an African film had won it. It also won the Paul Robeson Prize at FESPACO. I'm Coming for You! is her fiction feature debut, following a single mother in northern Cameroon who joins forces with a radical group of women after being cast out of her community. French backing is in place via Sanosi Productions, with support from the OIF, the World Cinema Fund, and the Durban Film Mart/Berlinale co-production circuit. **5. You Don't Die Two Times — Aïcha Weslati — Algeria/France** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Weslati is a French-Algerian-Tunisian journalist, photographer, and documentary filmmaker making her feature debut — a film following a young Nigerian migrant woman retracing a perilous journey toward Europe. The project has assembled robust institutional support: AFAC, Doha Film Institute, Hot Docs Blue Ice Docs, Cairo Film Connection, Thessaloniki Agora Docs in Progress, Almería Film Industry Days, and the IDFA Bertha Fund IBF Europe scheme. A wide and credible chain of support for a debut documentary. **6. Hamlet from the Slums — Ahmed Fawzi Saleh — Egypt** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Saleh's first feature, Poisonous Roses, premiered at IFFR in 2018 and became Egypt's submission to the 2020 Academy Awards International Feature category. Hamlet from the Slums was selected for L'Atelier at Cannes in 2022, placing the project inside the festival's co-production development pipeline. The Francophonie Image Fund awarded it €40,000 in production support in April 2024. Its inclusion in Doha Film Institute's Qumra 2026 lineup also indicates the film is still active at a late stage. In Hamlet from the Slums, Ahmed — the son of Cairo's junkyard king — has to avenge his best friend's death, even if it means confronting his father. **7. Dira Jai — Damilola Orimogunje — Nigeria/Germany** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Directors' Fortnight or Critics' Week. Orimogunje's debut feature premiered at Film Africa in 2020 and screened at the BFI London Film Festival and FESPACO. He also produced Babatunde Apolo's All the Colors of the World Are Between Black and White, which premiered at Berlinale 2023 Panorama and won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film. Dira Jai is his second feature, co-produced with Germany's Depth and Optics Productions, and has been confirmed to receive HBF+Europe post-production support as of March 2026. Dira Jai follows two estranged sisters who reunite in late 1990s Ibadan to care for their paralyzed mother after a tragedy. **Two More Just Outside the Main Seven** **8. House of the Wind — Bernard-Auguste Kouemo Yanghu — Cameroon/France/Belgium/Benin/Saudi Arabia/Qatar** Stage: Picture Lock. Predicted section: Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. If there is one title outside my main seven that looks closer to the line than the others, it may be House of the Wind. Doha Film Institute selected it for Qumra 2026 in the Picture Lock feature narrative section — one of the most advanced public stages any late-March title can have. Kouemo Yanghu is making his first feature after earlier short work, so this is not a director arriving with the same feature-level pedigree as some of the stronger names in the main list. But Picture Lock by late March is real. **9. Vagabonds — Amartey Armar — Ghana/France** Stage: Post-production. Predicted section: Long shot for Directors' Fortnight or Critics' Week. Armar's short Tsutsui screened in Cannes' official short film selection in 2022. His first feature has moved through multiple Cannes-adjacent industry spaces, including Cannes' Focale GoPro, the Red Sea Souk, and the 2025 Atlas Workshops, where it was presented among films in production or post-production with an expected completion date of May 2026. That gives it real pedigree and momentum — but also makes the Cannes 2026 timing tight enough that I'd treat it as a fringe possibility, not a core prediction. **Two More That May Be Ready, Even If the Cannes Case Is Weaker** **10. Mawusika, the Shadow of a Legend — Falagan Amuzu — Togo** Stage: Near finished / completed. Predicted section: Long shot for a parallel section. On March 23rd, 2026, Togo's Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and the Arts reported that Minister Isaac Chiakpe attended a screening of the film on March 21st, 2026 at Hôtel du Février in Lomé and described it as an advanced premiere before a public audience of cultural and institutional figures. Amuzu has an existing feature track record in Togo, including Point de Suture, Sherifa, Solim, and Le Coup de Grâce. What the film does not yet have — at least in the public record I could verify — is the kind of international sales activity, festival lab visibility, or co-production market trail that usually feeds Cannes predictions coverage. Mawusika follows a Paris-trained architect who is forced to return to Lomé to take over her aging mother's waxcloth business. **11. Nomadish — Yacine Meraki — Morocco/Hungary/Qatar** Stage: Active post-production / extended completion. Predicted section: Very long shot. The OIF listed it for finishing support in April 2024. Doha Film Institute's 2024 Spring Grant Cycle listed it in MENA Feature Narrative Post-Production. Crew United also identifies the project under the working title cluster Al-Qabulin, aka Nomadish/Sirocco, describing it as a Hungary-Morocco production dated 2022–2026. Set in Casablanca in 1961, the film follows Eduardo, who sets out on a covert, illegal mission to salvage a wrecked ship on the Atlantic coast. **Two That Won't Make It, But Would Have** **12. My Muses — Kaouther Ben Hania — Tunisia** Ben Hania already has the kind of Cannes history that puts a new project into immediate contention: Beauty and the Dogs in Un Certain Regard in 2017, The Man Who Sold His Skin in the official selection in 2020, Four Daughters winning the L'Œil d'or for Best Documentary in 2023 and later reaching the Academy Awards. If My Muses were ready, it would belong near the top of this list on director profile alone. By all accounts, it isn't ready for Cannes 2026. My Muses is set in 1990s Tunisia and follows Bouchra, who resists a new imam's attempt to turn her family's mausoleum into a mosque, then begins investigating the saint associated with the site after meeting a cameraman. **13. Don't Let the Sun Go Up on Me — Asmae El Moudir — Morocco** El Moudir's The Mother of All Lies won the Best Director prize in Un Certain Regard and the L'Œil d'or at Cannes in 2023. Her follow-up has assembled a real 2025–2026 trail, with Outplay Film Sales on board, post-production support at Atlas Workshops, Hubert Bals Fund backing, and CPH:DOX industry visibility in March 2026. The public record suggests the film is still in post-production and seeking further industry support in March 2026, which makes Cannes 2026 unlikely and shifts the title more naturally into the 2027 field. The film follows Fatemeh Zahra, a young woman living with xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disorder that prevents her from being exposed to sunlight. **A Note on Method and Uncertainty** This exercise also has limits. Public funding trails, market selections, and post-production memos can tell us which films are active and sometimes which are close. They can't tell us everything Cannes programmers have already seen, how finished a cut really is, or which titles were held back for Venice, Toronto, or a 2027 or later launch. Others may still turn up in Locarno, San Sebastián, London, Marrakech, IDFA, or elsewhere. So the list works best as a map of proximity, not certainty. Some of these films have strong public cases. Some are here because the available evidence indicates they are close enough to warrant a mention. That said, the African Film Pipeline Registry gives me a way to compare very different kinds of movement across the same field — a sales pickup here, a picture lock label there, a co-production mark at birth, a fund award, a returning director, a debut filmmaker with unusual traction. See you on April 9th.
