The Weekender will open with Damilola Orimogunje’s beautiful debut Dear Ajayi, fresh from its World Premiere at Venice Film Festival.

When Jihan was six years old, her father flew to Cairo and never returned. Jihan’s mother Baha Al Omary, a strong-willed Syrian-American artist, began searching for him.

Ruben, a despondent 26-year-old, returns home to Haiti to reconnect with his estranged father before it's too late.

An intimate portrait of Ugandan poet-academic Dr. Stella Nyanzi, who defies state repression with bold acts of resistance.

In honour of its 40th anniversary, we revisit John Akomfrah’s groundbreaking experimental documentary essay on race, protest and belonging in 80s Britain.

An elderly goat herder in the mountains of Namaqualand, South Africa, falls victim to a scam promising long-overdue reparations for her father’s WWII service.

X, an Albino baby manages to survive his contentious birth but loses his mother in the process. He comes of age, forming a bond with his fraternal brother and sister, Léle and Maria.

Across stories from Egypt, Nigeria, US, Somalia and Zimbabwe, this short film programme considers what it means to claim space in a world that has already decided where you belong.

In the village of Manjacaze, Mozambique, Pastor Hélder struggles with a fading faith. His small congregation dwindles, his sermons fail to inspire, and his wife Helena’s prayers for a child go unanswered.

When the air-conditioners in the city of Luanda mysteriously began to fall, Matacedo (security guard) and Zezinha (maid) embark on a mission to retrieve the boss’s AC by the end of the day.

Hasna and Meriem leave their native Morocco to work as seasonal laborers picking strawberries in Southern Spain. Hoping to return home and provide a better life for their families, their dreams clash with a harsh reality.

Seventeen-year-old Luthando, adorkable, bookish, and forever drifting between reality and her vivid inner world, returns for another year at a prestigious South African all-girls’ boarding school where reputation is everything, and nonconformity is quietly disciplined.

When a Chinese merchant brings to a neighbourhood of Luanda a peculiar holy plastic figure of Our Lady, a mourning mother will seek peace, a committed barber starts a new cult, and a stray child will look for revenge for his lost friend.

Spanning Algeria and France, Magma follows Mia as she sets out to understand how colonialism tore her family apart.

This year’s Weekender will close with Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu’s House of the Wind, which recently had its world premiere at Venice Film Festival.