From a commercial standpoint, African cinema is in a state of flux. Economic realities are shrinking an already narrow, cinema-going audience, and streaming services have clearly slammed on the brakes of their investments in local services. This means filmmakers need to scale accordingly for broader access, as seen in the embrace of YouTube as a veritable distribution platform for mid-level budget films. It also means some of the best films made by African filmmakers aren’t being seen by a wide range of viewers, partly due to an emphasis on festival runs.
This year’s selection of OkayAfrica’s best feature films shows the breadth of the creative ingenuity of African filmmakers. From familial dramas to poignant documentaries, from debut features to highly anticipated follow-ups by celebrated directors, these selections underline a brilliant present in African cinema.
10. Minimals in a Titanic World
The debut feature of Rwandan filmmaker Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo can be confounding. It has a plot, sort of: Anita (Aline Amike) has just been let out of prison with a warning for assault, only to learn that her boyfriend died during her short stint behind bars, and she now has to work her way through the grief. She ends up finding solace with her boyfriend’s roommate, piling on the things she needs to figure out. She’s also an aspiring musician trying to search for her footing. Rather than opt for a linear narrative, Sharangabo trails Anita and her friends as they grapple with fears about losing people, finding love, and finding self. There’s some profundity to be gleaned from the film’s collage of dance, short scenes, and bare conversations.
9. Aisha Can’t Fly Away
In Aisha Can’t Fly Away, the titular character is a Sudanese immigrant in Ain Shams, a neighborhood in Cairo, Egypt. Aisha (Buliana Simona) fled war but she’s still fighting, as she navigates different layers of cruelty, from her employers who she works for as a caregiver, to a local gang leader who browbeats her into robbing patients, and a situationship with an Egyptian cook that’s doomed to fail. All Aisha wants is to be treated with empathy and dignity, but she barely has any agency within the context of her situation, a theme that gives the film its beating heart. As she struggles with her fears, her dreams cross into reality, a motif that is represented with the film’s regular dip into magical realism.
8. The Herd
At the renewed height of annoyance and anxiety over Nigeria’s longstanding insecurity crisis, The Herd landed on Netflix at the most apt time. The thriller is an acutely aware illustration of the country’s terrorism situation, going beyond simple portrayal and venturing into varying levels of character study. It interweaves those kidnapped and the people frantically trying to get them back, humanizing an all too often occurring event that many only witness through news reports. At the time of its streaming release, hundreds had been recently kidnapped in schools in northern Nigeria, and a church had also been attacked. The Herd doesn’t proselytize about the situation as much as it lays out a simple fact: all of this is tragic.
7. The Heart is a Muscle
Imran Hamdulay’s The Heart is a Muscle may not wring out tears, but it’s the kind of film that jabs at viewers’ emotional well for its raw and vulnerable portraiture. Ryan (Keenan Arrison) is a father who loses his cool after his son goes missing at a barbecue gathering, and rumors get to him that he’s been spotted in a gang-controlled area. The violence he inflicts unravels the tension he’s been carrying for years, as a man raised in a traumatic context and a father building a much gentler life for his family. The film follows Ryan as he unspools the learned habits he thought he had tucked in. Hamdulay’s portrayal of wounded masculinity and the difficulty of healing is heightened by its setting in Cape Town’s infamous flats, putting an emotionally engaging story in a lived-in context.
6. Memory of Princess Mumbi
Damien Hauser’s Memory of Princess Mumbi is one of the most inventive African films of 2025. Amidst the global debate about the role of Artificial Intelligence in film, with many opinions leaning towards weary and worrying, Hauser’s film employs AI as a lukewarm gambit, useful as an aesthetic tool but spiritually hollow. Played out in a retrofuturistic setting, it follows Kuve (Abraham Joseph), an ambitious filmmaker looking to document a war that decimated modern civilization and technology. At a village he goes to for his film, he meets local creative Mumbi (Shandra Apondi) and the pair strike up a close friendship that inevitably leads to romantic tension, but the problem is that Mumbi is supposed to marry someone else due to an old promise. The heart of it is simple, but Hauser’s execution is intriguing and occasionally boundless.
5. Ancestral Visions of the Future
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese proved himself to be a formidable storyteller with his acclaimed debut feature, This is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection. With this year’s remarkable follow-up, Ancestral Visions of the Future, he engages the familiar themes in his past work – displacement and belonging – within the confines of a visual essay. This time, it’s more explicitly personal, as the filmmaker explores his relationship with Lesotho, a country he’s fond of but doesn’t necessarily love. Piecing together metaphorical images and vocal ruminations, Mosese casts his eyes to the meaning of time, especially when your life is braided to those who came before you and played a vital role in shaping you.
4. Khartoum
There’s a tendency to reduce war to statistics like the number of people killed and/or displaced. That leads to minimal acknowledgements of the nuances of those actually living through the violent conflict. Khartoum maximizes the lives, truths, and fears of five protagonists, as they re-enact how they came to survive the first weeks of the ongoing civil war in Sudan. The poetic documentary traverses courage, heartbreak, healthy bits of humor, and potent glimpses of healing. Partly set against a green screen, the five filmmakers – including four Sudanese creatives – merge reportage with a creative rendering that is intimate, staying faithful to the gilded memories of their subjects with a compelling verve.
3. My Father’s Shadow
In Akinola Davies Jr.’s debut feature, My Father’s Shadow, two young boys who barely see their father are excited when they get to spend a day with him in the big city where he works. Set in one of the most tense yet optimistic periods in Nigerian history, the film situates inner turmoil, complex familial relationships, and coming-of-age dynamics within a background that heightens the stakes. Sope Dirisu’s performance as a man who’s desperate for money owed to him and a father keen on securing a brighter future for his children is nothing short of inspiring. What plays out is a story of a father and sons getting bound emotionally under the looming spectacle of national dysfunction.
2. Cotton Queen
The final shot of Suzanna Mirghani’s Cotton Queen is deeply satisfying. Nafisa (Mihad Murtada) stands in front of a fire she has set, her defiance mixing with the yellow-orange hue as she utters the final line: I determine my future. Cotton Queen, in a sense, is about agency. Cotton is at its center, the planting, the picking, the weaving, and the selling, but more than that, the film interrogates Sudan’s colonial past and its relation to continued, capitalistic extraction. It also examines the traditions that govern coming-of-age, particularly for young ladies. Humor, intergenerational tension, yearning, magical realism, and more elements collide gloriously for a film that covers so much ground while being delightfully specific.
1. The Voice of Hind Rajab
Even before The Voice of Hind Rajab settles in, the heartbreak is already there. Kaouther Ben Hania’s portrayal of the dying minutes of a young Palestinian girl in Gaza is an emotional journey that plunges viewers into the deep end and stays there, because that’s what the story requires. Six-year-old Hind Rajab is the only survivor after her relatives died in a car shooting, an attack allegedly carried out by Israeli forces. Rajab was trapped in the wreckage and called Red Crescent volunteers, hoping to be rescued. Clips of the call went viral on social media in January 2024 when it happened; Ben Hania makes Rajab’s voice the center of the docu-drama, with actors playing roles based on the volunteers. It shows a compelling glimpse of the horror of Israel’s alleged genocidal attack on Gaza, a potent reminder that tragedy is more than numbers.
