FCAT 2026 will run from Friday, May 22 to Saturday, May 30, 2026, across Tarifa, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, opening with a special event at the iconic Cinema Rif (Cinémathèque de Tanger).
By Adedamola Jones Adedayo
The Tarifa-Tangier African Film Festival (Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa-Tánger, FCAT) has officially returned for its 23rd edition, continuing its longstanding role as a cinematic bridge between Europe and Africa across both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar.
FCAT 2026 will run from Friday, May 22 to Saturday, May 30, 2026, across Tarifa, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, opening with a special event at the iconic Cinema Rif (Cinémathèque de Tanger). The festival will showcase a diverse slate of films from Africa and its diaspora, under the theme “African islands”.
Opening the FCAT 2026 is Kenyan-Swiss filmmaker Damien Hauser’s Memory of Princess Mumbi (2025), a sci-fi mockumentary set in the futuristic African town of Umata in the year 2093. The film explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, technology, humanity, and filmmaking. It previously premiered at the Venice Film Festival 2025 before screening in the Centrepiece section of the Toronto International Film Festival in the same year.
A prominent highlight of FCAT 2026 programme is the Hyperopia feature film competition, containing 14 titles from countries such as Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho DR Congo, Uganda, South Africa and Morocco. The selection includes Lemohang Mosese’s Ancestral Visions of the Future (2025), Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki’s Bouchra, Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen (2025), Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow (2025), Vincho Nchogu’s One Woman, One Bra (2025), Patience Nitumwesiga’s The Women Who Poked The Leopard (2025), and Devon Delmar & Jason Jacobs’ Variations on a Theme (2026), among others.
The festival’s In Brief official short film selection will also present an array of notable short-form works, including Sanaa El-Alaoui’s Aicha (2025), Teboho Edkins’s An Open Field (2025), Samuel Suffren’s Blue Heart (2025), Nina Khada’s Night Watchers (2025), Naishe Nyamubaya’s God Sleeps on Sunday (2025), and Rami Jarboui’s The Bird’s Placebo (2026).
A specially curated Islands Retrospective section will explore African insularity through cinema, presenting 27 films from Comoros, Mauritius, Cape Verde, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea, and Afro-Caribbean regions including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. Featured works include Sarah Maldoror’s Aimé Césaire–Un Homme Une Terre (1977), Sara Gómez’s In A Way (1975), Hachimiya Ahamada’s The Ylang Ylang Residence (2008) and Nino Martínez Sosa’s Liborio (2021).
Additional information on accessibility, ticketing, and both physical and virtual attendance for FCAT 2026 is available via the festival’s official platform.