Gëstu International Documentary Film Festival to Hold First Edition in Dakar

Gëstu International Documentary Film Festival is a newly launched international film festival devoted to showcasing documentary films in Dakar, Senegal. ​Derived from  Wolof,  Gëstu—means  “to research” or “to deepen”—the festival emerges from Dakar’s thriving creative underground. The first edition of the festival which is scheduled to hold from 12–14 February 2026 at the Maison des Cultures Urbaines, Ouakam (a public cultural venue in Dakar dedicated to contemporary arts) will set the tone of the festival’s subsequent editions. 

The festival was founded by a three-woman team including Diana Alima Cissé,  Anne-Marie Diedhiou and Mariama Sow. According to the founders, there’s a creative buzz and dynamism around fiction cinema in Senegal. And as documentary film enthusiasts, they noticed the underrepresentation of the genre in Dakar’s creative scene and contemporary conversations. Thus,  with the Gëstu festival, they want to carve out a space for documentary cinema in the heart of Dakar.

“Often seen as elitist, we aim to make documentary cinema more accessible with a selection of intimate, globally-focused films. This will help our audience see documentaries as artistic productions where emotions are central, not distant from their daily lives,” they shared. 

The festival won’t be solely dedicated to screening of documentary cinema but serve as a space for sharing, discovery, and research around documentary cinema for the people of Dakar. Screenings will be accompanied by educational sessions on filmmaking techniques, documentary history, sociology, and visual ethnography.

The festival has a Documentary Creation Workshop which will be led by Vincent Picoteiro, Pierre Lazarus, Mariama Niang, and Fatou Kiné Ndao, targeting students from the Institute of Arts and Culture at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. Films produced during the workshop will be part of the post-production training curriculum at YENNENGA CENTER. The workshop’s goal is to contribute to the training and professionalization of young people in Senegal’s film industry through documentary filmmaking. 

The Gëstu documentary film festival will focus on intimate, human-centric, and personal narratives from around the world. In planning its inaugural edition, the festival highlights diverse, personal stories through shorts, medium, and feature-length films. The festival is part of the growing cultural landscape in Dakar.