Ten African productions have been selected for the programme of the 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2026), scheduled to take place from 10th to 20th September, 2026.
By Adedamola Jones Adedayo
Ten African productions have been selected for the programme of the 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), scheduled to take place from 10th to 20th September, 2026. The selected productions involve filmmakers and co-production partners from Rwanda, Gabon, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Egypt, Chad and Ghana.
The festival’s Centrepiece section includes the African titles Ben’Imana, Congo Boy, Future Tense, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, and Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars, bringing together features that have earned acclaim on this year’s international festival circuit, major global premieres, and new works from established filmmaking luminaries and festival favourites.
Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo will present Ben’Imana, a co-production between Rwanda, Gabon, France and Norway. The feminist debut feature, which won Caméra d’Or at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, explores forgiveness in the wake of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda.
Similarly, Rafiki Fariala will showcase Congo Boy, a co-production involving the Central African Republic, France, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Italy. This follows its successful outing at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where its lead actor Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset won the Best Actor award in the Un Certain Regard section. Based on the director Fariala’s own experience as a displaced Congolese finding purpose in art, the film is about a young man trying to care for his family while forging his own path as a rapper in Bangui.
Future Tense, a South Africa-Australia co-production directed by Jenna Cato Bass, will have its world premiere in the same lineup, focusing on climate change, human guilt, and South Africa’s identity in a time-lapse story set in the near future.
Daniel Oriahi’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, an adaptation of Lola Shoneyin’s novel of the same title, will also premiere in the Centrepiece section. Exploring themes of infertility, gendered inheritance, and shifting family power dynamics, the Nigerian production follows the fragile household of a wealthy patriarch as tensions emerge after the youngest of his four wives is unable to conceive.
Five years after Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun returns to TIFF with Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars, a Chad–France co-production. Following its debut at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize, the film will make its North American premiere at TIFF. It follows a teenage girl with mysterious spiritual gifts who befriends a woman accused of witchcraft, challenging fear, superstition, and the traditions of her desert community.
In the Special Presentations section, Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri will present Clarissa, a Nigeria–United States co-production. Led by Sophie Okonedo and David Oyelowo, the Esiri brothers’ sophomore feature reimagines Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway within the contemporary setting of Lagos.
South African filmmaker John Trengove’s The Smell of Apples (Die Reuk van Appels) will have its world premiere in the Platform section. A co-production between South Africa, the Netherlands, and Chile, the film follows a sheltered 11-year-old white South African boy as he gradually comes to recognise the brutality of the apartheid system.
Also making its world premiere is Zjili: A Story of Sisterhood and The Burdens of Excess, directed by Christine Boateng and Hajara Musah Chambas. Screening in the Discovery section, the Ghanaian feature explores sisterhood and the weight of social expectations through a distinctly Ghanaian lens.
Outside the feature sections, TIFF 2026’s robust Short Cuts programme, a strand dedicated to bold, experimental and genre-bending shorts across seven curated screenings, recognises two African projects this year: The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with My Father, directed by Sameh Alaa and Robin Vouters; and The Spectacular Death of Prisca, directed by Kaelo Iyizoba.
A co-production between France, Egypt and Belgium, the film is set in the bustling neighbourhoods of 1960s Cairo and tells the story of a father returning home after years in prison, hoping to repair his fractured relationship with his eldest son.
Meanwhile, The Spectacular Death of Prisca, directed by Nigerian filmmaker Kaelo Iyizoba, is set against the backdrop of 2000s Nollywood. Described as a combination of bold aesthetics, chaotic twists, and delightfully over-the-top melodrama, it follows a mother who, on her daughter’s wedding day, embarks on a surreal quest to rescue the daughter.