Eight African Films Selected for the 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival

The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced the official selection for its 2026 edition and it features some African titles. The selected African titles span Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Algeria, Central African Republic, and DR Congo. From Nigeria to Congo, the filmmakers are addressing topical subject matters that capture the realities of Africans. 

Established in 1952, MIFF is an independent not-for-profit organisation, Australia’s premier film festival, and one of the world’s oldest film festivals, alongside Cannes and Berlin. It presents a curated global program of innovative screen experiences and the world’s largest showcase of exceptional Australian filmmaking, making MIFF an accessible, iconic cultural event that provides transformative experiences for audiences and filmmakers alike. 

The selected African titles include Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’lmana, from Rwanda. The Cannes Caméra d’Or-winning film is an unflinching, deeply felt portrait of a community seeking justice, and closure, in the wake of a genocide. Set in 2012 Kibeho, a rural village in the south of Rwanda, the film follows Vénéranda, who is deeply committed to the post-genocide reconciliation process, as she is asked to publicly forgive the man who killed most of her family, and her sister Suzanne is outraged at the suggestion.

Another Cannes award-winning title showing is Rafiki Fariala’s Congo Boy, a coming-of-age tale about a teenage refugee whose musical ambitions might just save his life. The feature film centers seventeen-year-old Robert, who is trying his best to make ends meet. But as a Congolese refugee in Bangui, in the Central African Republic, the odds are stacked against him. He copes by writing songs and lyrics, while holding on to his dream of making it as a musician. 

Chuko and Arie Esiri’s Clarissa had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight Section at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award. It has recently been selected as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In the film, an  elegant Lagos society wife, Clarissa (Sophie Okonedo), prepares to host an opulent party when she remembers one golden summer with the friends of her youth: aspiring writer Peter (Toheeb Jimoh), outspoken Sally (Ayo Edebiri), and cheerful Ugo. This recollection raises questions: Why didn’t she marry the passionate Peter, or explore her attraction to Sally? When Clarissa unexpectedly runs into the now-dispirited expat Peter (David Oyelowo), she invites him to the party, where the quartet reunites and reckons with their past choices. 

In Abdallah Alkhatib’s Chronicles From the Siege, viewers are thrown into an unidentified war zone under constant attack. Survival doesn’t just mean dodging bombs and sniper fire, but also trying to find food, warmth, a cigarette, or the time and privacy to have sex. While former filmmaker Arafat scavenges for food and medicine, a group of young friends break into his boarded-up video store, debating whether to burn the old videotapes to make a fire or trade memories of their favourite movies. 

In South African Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs’ Variations on a Theme, which won the coveted Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Hettie is a goat-herder in South Africa’s remote Kamiesberg mountains. On the eve of her 80th birthday, she’s offered long-overdue reparations for her father’s military service in World War II. The only problem: it’s a scam. As Hettie and her neighbours wait for money that will never come, other villagers search for diamonds, watch rugby, play dominoes, or slip into memories. Surrounded by ghosts of past conflicts, in a rural hamlet forgotten by South African society, they are victims of forces large and small, but each has their own rich inner life. 

On the documentary front, The Critics and Pietra Brettkelly’s Crocodile will show at the Tales of Cinema section. Spanning 13 years, the documentary chronicles the incredible rise of a group of young Nigerian filmmakers working outside the Nollywood system. The Critics, as they call themselves, were not teenagers when they first formed. By watching predominantly sci-fi blockbusters, they decided on making sci-fi films. To accomplish this, they used hand-sewn green screens, makeshift tripods, borrowed iPhones, and taught themselves via Wikipedia and YouTube tutorials. The documentary catalogues their growth. 

On the short front, Fredj Moussa’s Land of Barbar will be showing. The Franco-Tunisian visual artist and director adapted a parable from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, assembling striking images of veiled faces, secondhand fabrics, and majestic animals that humorously evoke Western ideas about the former Barbary Coast. The short is a playful, politically charged work of revisionist myth-making, filled with vibrant colours and costumes.

Lastly, we have Mo Harawe’s Whispers of a Burning Scent where a stoic wedding-band keyboardist is dragged from a gig to face court: the adult children of his much older wife say he exploited their mother’s dementia to sell her properties, but will drop the fraud charges if he divorces her. Like the frankincense he burns for his ailing wife, truths about devotion, dignity, and loss waft mysteriously throughout this observational drama.