The 2025 edition of the S16 Festival will screen some of this year’s festival-favourites, including a special presentation of Akinola Davies Jr.’s debut feature, My Father’s Shadow.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
The S16 Film Festival (XVI) has announced the lineup for its landmark fifth edition, scheduled to run from 1st to 5th December, 2025, under the theme “Let There Be Light”.
This year’s festival will screen several 2025 festival-favourites, including a special presentation of Akinola Davies Jr.’s debut feature, My Father’s Shadow (2025 – Nigeria, United Kingdom). The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Caméra d’Or Special Mention for Best First Feature, and subsequently screened at both the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the BFI London Film Festival.
The Festival will open with Cotton Queen (2025 – Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia), which premiered at the 2025 Venice Critics’ Week, an independent and parallel section of the Venice International Film Festival. Cotton Queen is the debut feature by Sudanese-Russian filmmaker, Suzannah Mirghani, and the first fiction feature by a female Sudanese director.
Selected as the closing film for this year’s S16 Festival is Memory of Princess Mumbi (2025 – Kenya, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia), by Swiss-Kenyan Director Damien Hauser, which premiered in the Venice Days sidebar of the Venice Film Festival and went on to screen at TIFF and the NBO Film Festival.
Also screening in official selection is Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo’s feature film debut, Minimals in a Titanic World (2025 – Cameroon, Germany, Rwanda), which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) before screening at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). The festival will host a special presentation of Marjolijn Prins’ magic-realist documentary, Fantastique (2025 – Netherlands, France, Belgium), which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival Kids Screenings.
In the short film categories, over twenty films from across Africa will screen in and out of competition. Selections include Nana Kofi Asihene’s Wrong Way (2025 – Ghana), which screened at this year’s The Annual Film Mischief (TAFM) and won the award for Best Independent Film Director at the 2025 All African Independent Film Festival (AIIFF Africa), as well as Rolf Hellat’s Dèjà Nu (2023 – Côte d’Ivoire), which won Best Independent Experimental Film at AIIFF Africa 2025 after screening at the 2023 Durban International Film Festival.
Dika Ofoma’s Obi Is a Boy (2025 – Nigeria) is also among the short films in competition at the Festival. Ofoma, who won the Rising Star award at the 2024 edition, has become a regular presence at the S16 festivals, with his earlier short films, A Japa Tale (2022), A Quiet Monday (2023), and God’s Wife (2024), screening at previous editions of the Festival.
The Festival will also feature a Brazil Shorts Presentation, continuing S16’s partnership with the Brazil African Film Festival. Short films in this section include Tigrezza (2025 – Brazil) directed by Vinícius Eliziário, and 5 Fitas (2021 – Brazil) by Heraldo De Deus and Vilma Martins.
The S16 Film Festival was established in 2021 by the Surreal 16 Collective (founded by Nigerian independent filmmakers, Michael Omonua, C.J. Obasi and Abba T. Makama) as a curated art house film festival for African indie filmmakers from around the world. The 2025 edition will take place at Alliance Française, Filmhouse Cinema at Landmark Centre, and the Nigerian Film Corporation, all in Lagos, Nigeria.