Africa’s Stories.
Wales’s Screen.
Africa is not one story.
13
Years of festival
168
Films screened
10,000+
Viewers
1
Wales’s only African film festival
My Father’s Shadow
Akinola Davis · Nigeria-UK · 2025 · 93 min
Two young brothers explore Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis — witnessing both the city’s magnitude and their father’s own reckoning.
The screening opens the festival at 18:10, following welcome remarks from festival producer Rosemary Adjoa Dery, and is followed by the Akwaaba Launch Party with a DJ set from Samandaal on the Concourse.
Three days. Films, workshops, music, market.
13:30
African Storytelling Workshop
Saturday · Cinema Foyer · With Bevin Magama
Discover the art of African storytelling through guided exercises, creative prompts and shared experiences. Open to all backgrounds and experience levels.
15:00
African Dance Workshop
Saturday · Dance Studio · With Idrissa Camara
West African dance traditions meet contemporary performance practice. Live rhythms, a welcoming room, and movement as a form of expression and community.
10:00–18:00
Mansa Market
Saturday & Sunday · Concourse
Inspired by Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage and the cultural exchange it created. Food, craft, textiles and traders across the full festival weekend.
Feature, short, animation, documentary, experimental.
Omen
Baloji · Belgium/DR Congo · 2023. Time ·16:50
Four people considered witches and sorcerers find a way to help each other escape their fate, in a phantasmagorical Africa.
Liyana
Eswatini · Family/PG · Saturday. Time 11:30
Five children in the Kingdom of Eswatini turn past traumas into the tale of a Swazi girl who sets out to save her twin brothers.
The people bringing these stories to the screen.
Bevin Magama
Facilitator, African Storytelling Workshop · Saturday, Cinema Foyer
Discover the art of African storytelling with Bevin Magama in this engaging, interactive workshop at the Watch-Africa Film Festival. Through guided exercises, creative prompts, and shared experiences, participants will explore how stories connect us, preserve culture, and inspire change. Drawing on African storytelling traditions alongside contemporary approaches, Bevin will help participants develop their voice, build confidence, and craft compelling narratives.
LAKU NEG
Meet Adéọlá
An artist-researcher living in Wales since 2003. I am interested in carnival, masquerade and ritual and the ways in which we perform our fragments – the ways we express identity and belonging in the diaspora – through memory, re-imagination and the making of sacred spaces.
Samandaal
DJ, Akwaaba Launch Party
Friday night on the Concourse. Samandaal opens the festival weekend with a set spanning the continent and its diaspora.
More than a film festival. A gathering.
Live music, dance and celebration
From the Akwaaba Launch Party to the closing TUZO Party, the weekend is built around gathering. In Swahili, tuzo means award or reward — so we celebrate success and culture together.
Short Snacks and conversation
After a curated selection of films, enjoy a range of African snacks and discuss what you’ve just watched. We know good conversation happens over good food.
Since 2013, in Cardiff.
Opening nights
Thirteen editions of queues around the block, first-time visitors and returning regulars.
Filmmaker Q&As
Directors, producers and performers in the room, answering the questions the film just raised.
Community screenings
Beyond the cinema — pavilions, gardens and partner venues across the city.
Year-Round Screenings
The festival doesn’t end in September.
Watch Africa runs a year-round monthly screenings programme, bringing African cinema to Cardiff audiences between festival editions — at Chapter Arts Centre, Grange Pavilion, and partner venues across the city.
One film. One evening. A room full of people who came to watch, talk, and stay a while after the credits roll.
WAFF Club
Closer to everything we do.
Our year-round community for people who don’t want to wait until September to be part of Watch Africa.
Free to join. Discounted monthly screenings, networking with filmmakers and industry, a hand in shaping the festival, and an official WAFF Club tee for every member.
Building stronger cultural connections between Wales and Africa.
Stay in the loop
Guest announcements, ticket launches and monthly screenings — first.
Express Your Africa.
11–13 September 2026 · Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. Whether you’re discovering African cinema for the first time or reconnecting with stories that feel like home — there’s a place for you here.
Watch Africa in the Moment
Follow Watch Africa Film Festival on Instagram for the latest festival news, films, conversations and community moments.
MY FATHER’S SHADOW 🎬
We open Watch Africa Film Festival 2026 with My Father’s Shadow, the debut feature from Nigerian-British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.
Set against the political unrest surrounding Nigeria’s 1993 presidential election, two young brothers ( @studio_bajulaye ) spend a day travelling through Lagos with their estranged father. What begins as a journey through the city becomes something much more intimate, revealing a father through the eyes of his sons.
Following the film, we’ll open up the conversation with Reel Futures and brothers Femi and Emmanuel Bajulaye, co-directors and stars of Ekun Omi: Tears of Desert Water and SOIL, exploring fatherhood, brotherhood, memory and the importance of telling Nigerian stories with authenticity.
And then we’re not going home. 👀
We head straight into AKWAABA, our festival launch party, with a DJ set from @samandollar welcome drinks and the official start of the WAFF weekend.
🎬 My Father’s Shadow + Panel Discussion
📅 Friday 11 September
⏰ 6:00pm
📍 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
🔞 15
🎶 AKWAABA Launch Party from 8:15pm
Open entry
Three days of African cinema, conversation, music, workshops and community begin here.
Express Your Africa.
DREAMERS 🎬
Love can find you in places built to take hope away.
Dreamers, written and directed by @joygharoro , follows Isio, a Nigerian migrant whose freedom is threatened inside a UK asylum removal centre. There, she forms an unexpected connection with fellow detainee Farah, and something tender begins to grow within a system designed around uncertainty.
Starring Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo and Ann Akinjirin, Dreamers is a queer romantic drama about love, friendship, freedom and finding joy in the midst of displacement.
📅 Saturday 12 September
⏰ 2:55pm
📍 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
🔞 15
Express Your Africa.
PLEASE, MR PREACHER 🎬
Written and performed by @nyasha.munashe, Please, Mr Preacher is a powerful monologue told through the character of a Black American Christian slave speaking to his white, supposedly Christian, slave-owner.
Please, Mr Preacher joins our Diaspora in Wales, a collection of short films by Wales-based African diaspora filmmakers exploring migration, identity, belonging, family, music and community through contemporary storytelling.
The screening brings together:
Ghost Conversation
Please, Mr Preacher
Unsent Letter
Àjọkẹ́
The Pocket
Alongside the winning film from the CCW × UrbanStamp Film Challenge.
📅 Sunday 13 September
⏰ 11:50am
📍 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
🎟 Pay What You Can
Come and see stories from the African diaspora in Wales, made here and shared on the big screen.
Express Your Africa.
Start Saturday morning with the Watch Africa Film Festival 2026 Short Film Finalists, bringing together emerging filmmakers and stories from across Africa and its diaspora.
I THINK I SHOULD SAY SOMETHING
A hair appointment takes an unexpected turn, leaving one young woman to find the courage to speak up to her very confident hairdresser.
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
A powerful man wakes up in Luanda with no memory, only to discover that nobody recognises the authority he once held.
MADAME MOREL
In 1997, a young Madagascan woman moves to La Réunion for an arranged marriage, hoping to build a better future.
Three films now in the running for a Watch Africa Film Festival 2026 Award.
📅 Saturday 12 September
⏰ 10:00am
📍 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
🎟 Pay What You Can via Eventbrite
Come watch the finalists on the big screen, then find out who takes home an award on Sunday night.
Express Your Africa.
#WatchAfricaFilmFestival #WAFF2026 #AfricanCinema #AfricanFilm #ShortFilms IndependentFilm Cardiff WhatsOnCardiff FilmInWales
LIYANA, directed by Aaron Kopp and Amanda Kopp, follows five children in Eswatini as they work with storyteller Gcina Mhlophe to create the fictional character of Liyana, a young girl who sets out on a dangerous journey to rescue her twin brothers.
Part documentary, part animation, the film moves between the children’s real experiences and the world they imagine, using storytelling to explore trauma, courage and hope.
A beautiful introduction to African cinema for younger audiences, families, and anyone who believes in the power of imagination.
🎬 LIYANA
Saturday 12 September | 11:30am
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
PG | 77 mins
Watch Africa Film Festival 2026
11–13 September
Express Your Africa.
🎟 Tickets link in bio#
#WatchAfricaFilmFestival #WAFF2026 #Liyana #AfricanCinema AfricanFilm Eswatini Cardiff WhatsOnCardiff FilmInWales
1966. A young Senegalese woman leaves home for a job with a French family, and finds herself trapped somewhere between employment and ownership.
Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl is often called the first feature film by a sub-Saharan African director to reach international audiences, and six decades on, its anger hasn’t dulled.
Sunday 13 September, 18:40, Chapter Arts Centre. Link in bio.
Have you got your tickets? 5 days to go… be ready to EXPRESS YOUR AFRICA
Oh you thought that was it we have more animations screening at our - The best of African animation. Perfect for families who love animation.
A curated selection from CTIAF 2025, made with @cardiffanimation and @CTIAF, showing the range of what African animation is doing right now, playful, inventive, and genuinely built for every age in the room.
Followed by a recorded Q&A with two of the directors behind the work.
Family friendly, age PG. Bring the kids, bring yourself, bring whoever needs an afternoon of something joyful.
Sunday 13 September, 2pm, Chapter Arts Centre. Link in bio.
