Afrika Film Festival Köln 2026: The panels will take place in the KHM Aula

Panel 1:
New Voices, New Forms – The African Documentary Today
Friday, September 18th 2026, 3:30 pm
KHM Aula, Filzengraben 2, 50676 Köln | Free admission

What does it mean to make a documentary in Africa today and what can non-fiction do that fiction simply cannot? This panel brings together three filmmakers whose work shares an urgent commitment to truth-telling, but whose formal approaches could hardly be more different. Together, they represent a new generation of African documentary filmmakers who refuse inherited forms. Their work is formally restless, politically urgent, and deeply personal – asking not only what happened, but how a film can tell it, and who gets to survive the telling. A panel on form, freedom, and the futures of African non-fiction.

With Jacqueline Nsiah, Zipporah Nyaruri, Gaël Kamilindi & Bassem Ben Brahim

Panel 2:
Who Heals When We Film?

Wednesday, September 23rd 2026, 3:30 pm

KHM Aula, Filzengraben 2, 50676 Köln | Free admission

Healing is the quiet centre of this year’s programme – not as a final destination, but as an open, often contradictory process. This panel brings together filmmakers from the festival selection to explore what it means to heal through cinema: for those who make films, for the people whose lives are portrayed on screen, and for the audiences who engage with them. How can films create spaces where grief, resistance, and hope can coexist? From music and rituals to protest and documentary testimony, the guests discuss the camera as a tool for engagement, listening, and healing—and the role cinema can play in times of social and political crisis.

With Patience Nitumwesiga, Ique Langa, Fradique & Khalid Shamis

Panel 3:
Sudan Beyond the Headlines – Cinema, Memory and Resistance
Friday, September 25th 2026, 3:30 pm
KHM Aula, Filzengraben 2, 50676 Köln | Free admission

The ongoing war in Sudan has created one of the world's most devastating humanitarian crises, yet the voices of Sudanese filmmakers remain far too often unheard. This panel brings together filmmakers and artists creating in the midst of war and displacement. Their films preserve memory, resistance, and cultural survival in the face of erasure. Here, memory becomes an act of justice. They invite us to encounter Sudanese filmmakers not only as witnesses to history, but as artists whose work deserves to be seen beyond the urgency of the crisis. How does war reshape the stories we tell? What happens to filmmaking when archives are destroyed and exile becomes a lived reality? 

With Ibrahim Omar, Ibrahim Snoopy, Ronnie Vitalia