AFRIFF 2025 wrapped its 14th edition in style, celebrating over a decade of showcasing African stories to the world. Since its start in 2010, AFRIFF has launched hundreds of films that have gone on to earn critical acclaim and reach global audiences.
Every year, the festival celebrates dramatic features, documentaries, and shorts, bringing together filmmakers and fans from across Africa and the diaspora.
But beyond the industry buzz, the festival is always about the films, and this year’s winners reflected the diversity, creativity, and talent thriving across Africa and the diaspora.
AFRIFF 2025: A New Era
This year’s edition, themed “Rhythms of the Continent: The AfroBeats Film Movement”, introduced a dedicated film and content marketplace, taking African cinema into a new commercial era. The marketplace makes it easier for filmmakers, distributors, and investors to connect, license content, and co-produce films, boosting African films’ reach worldwide.
The festival also partnered with MTN, Africa’s largest telecom company, to create global exposure opportunities for indigenous films. Industry sessions covered distribution, marketing, and content commissioning, while international collaborations brought filmmakers from Nigeria together with peers in France, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and the USA.
Bovi and Venita hosted the event, showcasing Africa’s creativity and giving audiences a front-row seat to the continent’s best films.
Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Film
The Eyes of Ghana: Ben Proudfoot
The Eyes of Ghana dives into the life of Chris Hesse, Kwame Nkrumah’s personal cameraman, and his priceless footage of Ghana’s early independence years.
Ben Proudfoot stitches history and emotion together, showing how Hesse’s lens captured the spirit of a new nation fighting to define itself.
Using rare archival footage from Ghana’s early post-independence era, Proudfoot tells a story of history and politics. His firsthand perspective brings a lively, human element to Ghana’s past, making the film both educational and deeply moving.
Best International Documentary
Tukki: From Roots to Bayou: Vincent Le Gal & Alune Wade
Tukki is all about music. It follows Senegalese musician Alune Wade, who connects the dots between Lagos’ rhythm, Senegal’s groove, and the jazz of New Orleans, tracing how African sound became the world’s language.
The film’s major aim is to celebrate African influence on global music.
Read Also: Why Every Filmmaker Should Submit to AFRIFF (Even if You’re Just Starting Out)
Best International Short Film
Majini: Joshua Neubert & Victor Muhagachi
A Tanzanian story about two brothers and a sea that tests more than their courage. When their father falls ill, one boy who can’t swim must accompany his brother on the water. Between fear and duty, he learns what manhood means in a world that gives you no time to grow into it.
It’s well-shot and deeply felt. A well-deserved win.
Best Short Film: The Day the Heart Died by Russell Oru
Oru’s film is piercing, as it tackles female genital mutilation (FGM), one of those subjects that still lives in silence in many Nigerian homes.
Told through the eyes of a young girl (Nengi) caught between her parents’ opposing beliefs, the film lets the tension unfold in real time, showing a father trying to protect his daughter and a mother torn between love and cultural duty.
Winning Best Short Film was both a nod to his craft and a recognition of a filmmaker willing to take on one of Nigeria’s most painful taboos with empathy and restraint.
Best Student Short
The Labyrinth: Toluwalope Okunade
Awarded Best Student Short, The Labyrinth showcases Toluwalope Okunade’s filmmaking skills and storytelling in a short-format project selected for AFRIFF 2025.
Best Animation
The Travails of Ajadi: Adeoye Adetunji
This stop-motion film took home both the trophy and a ₦2 million grant, and deservedly so. Adeoye Adetunji built everything by hand: clay models, tiny sets, fabric costumes, and paper textures.
The result is pure craft and a story that looks and feels tangible, almost breathing on its own. It’s proof that animation in Africa doesn’t need big studios to be brilliant, just imagination and persistence.
Best Documentary
The Eyes of Ghana: Ben Proudfoot
Yes, it took home another win. The Eyes of Ghana swept its category because it does what every documentary hopes to do: make you care about something you didn’t know existed an hour ago.
Best Documentary Short
Beyond the Screen: Peter Fada
“They tried to control Africa’s story — but we took the camera back.”
Peter Fada’s Beyond the Screen traces the evolution of African cinema, from colonial propaganda to creative liberation. Through films like the British classic Daybreak in Udi and Wole Soyinka’s Kongi’s Harvest, Fada shows how African filmmakers reclaimed their voice, transforming cinema from a tool of control into one of resistance, identity, and power.
Best Screenplay
To Adaego With Love: Brenda Garuba
A love story set in 1975, To Adaego With Love follows a Nigerian soldier and an Igbo teacher trying to build something tender in the aftermath of war.
Garuba’s writing captures the ache between healing and heartbreak, showing how love can exist even when the world around it is broken. It’s emotional without being sentimental, a writer’s film through and through.
