Washington University’s AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL 2025 Overview – Diane Carson reports

Celebrating its 19th year, Washington University’s African Film Festival excels at introducing “contemporary artistic production by African artists to American audiences, combating stereotypes.” Over the March 28 to 30 weekend, it will present seven short films and three narrative features, all less than two years old. From Senegal, Somalia, Nigeria, South Africa, Reunion, and Cameroon, they offer a diversity of cultures and issues, landscapes and languages. Succeeding technically and artistically, the films (and I have had the pleasure of watching all of them) dramatize insightful and poignant stories of personal and communal interaction, often against a political backdrop.

Read more

REUNION – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

New Zealand director Jake Mahaffy’s Reunion shows a very different take on the horror genre in an intimate, at times even suffocating horror-melodrama about an adult woman trapped in a fraught entanglement with her estranged mother. Emma Draper plays the troubled, pregnant adult daughter who returns to her now-dead grandparents’ home that’s is filled with shocking secrets.

Read more