This year’s selections span geographies and genres—science fiction, documentary, romantic comedy, family drama, and biopic—offering multiple perspectives on the scope and diversity of the Black diaspora. Together, the films take us through landscapes of Blackness rarely centered on screen, from African coastlines and European neighborhoods to Kenya, Spain, and, closer to home, New York and downtown Minneapolis.
What binds the films in this edition is a shared theme, Afro-Pasts, Afro-Futures. While the selections take us to many places—including, this year, Spike Lee’s Brooklyn, Rudy Gobert’s Minneapolis, and the empty graves of Tanzania and Ethiopia—they all explore the need to reconnect with the past: whether physically, through returns from abroad to home or from the diaspora back to Africa, or metaphorically, through memories, stories, and histories that shape personal and collective Black identities and cultures. But this common and insistent return to the past is not about being stuck. Across their diversity, the films share a forward-looking belief: that reconnecting with the past—personal, historical, or political—opens pathways forward. It is, in many ways, a return to the future. It is a multigenerational journey across time and borders that BEFF 2026 invites audiences to experience together with our visiting filmmakers and guests.
