IFFR 2017

Chanelle Aponte Pearson

A web series about the loves and challenges faced by a group of black, queer, polyamorous women in Brooklyn.

Perspectives

Black Rebels

195 Lewis

Frances Bodomo

A rag-tag group is trying to launch a moon rocket to beat the American Apollo 11. The astronaut is a 17-year-old girl who has to be the first to set foot on the moon along with her two cats.

Afronauts

Donald Glover

Earn (Donald Glover) is the inexperienced manager of his cousin, rapper Paper Boi. All they have in common is their struggle for a better life and earning more money. This hilarious, intelligent series, also aired by television channel FOX, offers an idiosyncratic, experimental narrative style but also a critical glimpse of the spirit of our times.

Atlanta

Horace Ové

In a filmed conversation with a largely black British audience, writer James Baldwin examines similarities between the British and American black experience and the role of white liberals in the struggle. With his fabled eloquence, Baldwin provides difficult issues such as race and skin colour with sharp and subtle commentary.

Baldwin's Nigger

Matt Wolf

Intimate portrait of black homosexual civil rights activist and Freedom March organiser Bayard Rustin. His partner Walter Naegle describes how they rebelliously managed to make their relationship legal after all.

Bayard & Me

Barry Jenkins

Young woman wrestles with her identity and failed relationship, reflected in the city of Miami. A cinematographic exploration of change as a natural process, the way chlorophyll makes photosynthesis possible in leaves.

Chlorophyl

Ernest Dickerson

An electrifying sketch of society in Curaçao focused on the apparently innocent domino game played by four men every Sunday. Until it unexpectedly takes a dramatic turn. There are dangerous secrets, women who make radical choices and a boy who sees everything. Based on the successful novel Double Play by Frank Martinus Arion.

Double Play

Lars Lovén

Lamin Daniel  Jadama

Göran Hugo  Olsson

An exciting exploration of the musical, social and cultural innovation presently spreading across the African continent. Fonko introduces us to a young generation that is rediscovering its own musical and activist heritage in countries like Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa and is producing a wide range of infectious new music styles.

Fonko

Charles Burnett

The idealist JJ starts as a rookie and first black cop in the department. There he comes across a murky affair and discovers that when he tries to expose it, there are powers and forces that try to stop him. A clear-cut indictment of racism, sexism and violence within a police department based on existing incidents.

The Glass Shield

Ezra Claytan Daniels

Adebukola Bodunrin

Yetunde is the only crew aboard the Nigerian space station Eko and witnesses the recreation of the origins of the universe. A futuristic reinterpretation of the Yoruba story of creation.

The Golden Chain

Sondra Perry

Self-portrait of Sondra Perry's avatar investigating its own identity. A problematic software process that leads to a fatal error mode: the blue screen of death.

Graft and Ash for a Three Monitor Workstation

Mike Todd

Ten years before Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash launched the new musical trend, the trailblazing Hustlers Convention appeared by Jalal Nuriddin, regarded by many as the 'Grandfather of Rap'. Interviews are juxtaposed with music excerpts in this investigation of the origins of hip-hop and the crucial role of this almost forgotten album.

Hustlers Convention

Mike Hoolboom

A story of the city in sixteen acts, recurring scenes with variations, of loss and humour. A look at the colour that is not a colour. Remembering Charlie "Africa" Keunang. (Mike Hoolboom)

Identification

Kevin Jerome Everson

Fascinating portrait of Malik Hudgins, who has been a member since 1974 of the Universal Negro Improvement Association founded by Marcus Garvey.

Improvement Association

Yasmin Thayná

A powerful visual essay about nappy hair. Confrontational and poetic, tranquil and exciting, it investigates the oppression of black Brazilian women, but also shows their power and diversity.

KBELA

An extremely sensitive, personal and political portrayal of the fate of black American working poor. In the poverty-stricken district of Watts, several years after the massive rebellion, Stan tries his very best to maintain his family. An iconic and widely-praised masterpiece by L.A. Rebellion filmmaker Charles Burnett.

Killer of Sheep

Ephraim Asili

A filmic link between two African communities in the diaspora: one in Hudson, New York and one in the Maroon village of Accompong in Jamaica. The symbol for this link is the Kindah tree.

Kindah

A semi-autobiographical portrait of video artist Sondra Perry's family, (un)recognisable thanks to the chroma-key green balaclavas. While we look at what is being shown to us, Perry continues to edit the film.

Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One

An uneasy one-night stand in San Francisco unexpectedly leads to a day of museum visits, political debates and cautious overtures. Impressive debut by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, who is now regarded as a key figure in modern American Black Cinema. Filmed in the tradition of romantic widely-roaming films like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Claire Denis's Friday Night.

Medicine for Melancholy

American indie sensation shows the life of a black man as he grows from being the poor child of a single, addicted mother into a tough adult continually wracked with doubt. This poetic narration about the exploration of identity, sexuality and bonding is pioneering in its tender portrayal of black masculinity. It has already won many prizes.

Moonlight

Two Arab immigrants work in a launderette where, just after 9/11, American flags are washed free of charge. While they fold flags meticulously, true love unfolds.

My Josephine

DJ Spooky

The music of DJ Spooky and the Kronos Quartet in Rebirth of a Nation is certainly no homage to D.W. Griffiths’ influential film from 1915. This remix of The Birth of a Nation emphasises the racist core of this notorious epic about a divided America by combining old images with new sounds.

Rebirth of a Nation

Akosua Adoma Owusu

Hushed monologue in black-and-white in which a young Ghanaian immigrant confesses in a warm, openhearted letter to his mother that his love for men was the reason he left for America.

Reluctantly Queer

A future San Francisco is inhabited only by affluent people. The authorities lure others into the city to do manual labour in exchange for free education.

Remigration

Keith Piper

An interactive installation by Keith Piper on three screens that investigates racial metaphors in science fiction. Using film excerpts accessible via interfaces, you dissect notions about robots, androids and cyborgs in order to draw parallels with historic and social ideas about the black body. Part of a project that Keith Piper initiated in 1998.

Robot Bodies

An interracial love story, made for Bloomingdale's department store, but there’s not a product in sight. A visual and introspective study of love in Jenkins' typical cinematographic style.

Tall Enough

Tirzo Martha

Tirzo Martha's altarpiece of twelve monitors with two watching saints shows the attempts, illusions and failures of a figure who presents himself as a hero, holy man and the hope of humanity. He has even started to believe this himself. Pride obscures his view of reality, so that he not only underestimates others but ignores them.

Testament of Hope and Failure

Terence Nance

In a dystopian future, people live in darkness to protect themselves from the harmful rays of the sun. Except for a naughty little black girl.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025