The International Images Film Festival (Harare) 22nd Edition 2025 Catalogue : Greetings from Molleen Chisveto, IIFF Acting Director

The International Images Film Festival (Harare)

22nd Edition 2025 Catalogue

and Greetings from Molleen Chisveto, IIFF Acting Director

See link to Catalogue below.

The International Images Film Festival for Women is back again for its 22nd edition, running from 22 to 26 August. We are excited to bring you a line up of women centred films with the theme ‘Women Make The World A Better Place’. The theme draws attention to how women remain resolute in their pursuit of a better world for themselves and their communities by being brave and courageous, by claiming their rightful places in economic activities, by demanding justice, and by taking leadership in order to challenge a repressive patriarchal world that has brought horrors like planet-destroying climate change and a resurgence of racism and gender discrimination into our world. In these times, creative and cultural industries are chronically underfunded. Producing the 2025 edition of IIFF has been no mean feat. I'm grateful to all the filmmakers whose work we screen over the next few days. I invite everyone to enjoy our programme of fifteen films that range from short fiction, to long and short documentaries and long fiction, all carefully selected from around the world. Two industry masterclasses complement the screenings. A documentary production masterclass takes place on Saturday 23 August, and a film business masterclass takes place on Sunday 24 August. Details are in this programme.

IIFF is thankful to be in a position to continue its contribution to realising SDG 5: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere for yet another year. Telling stories of violence and harmful practices against women and girls and making such actions public works towards SDGs 5.1 and 5.2. Leadership only comes with public presence. IIFF, a woman founded, led and run organisation puts women firmly in the public space. This contributes to SDG 5.4 and encourages other young women to occupy public spaces. The creative industry is now a growing economic sector globally. IIFF is a platform for training and solidarity for women in the film industry, which also includes the use of technology in women's empowerment, as set out in SDG 5.B. This year special thanks go to the Embassy of the Republic of Ireland for supporting the Documentary Production Masterclass and the festival, the Embassy of Switzerland for hosting the opening film and reception, the Spanish Embassy for sponsoring the Business of Film masterclass, for allowing us to use their venue, Japanese Embassy for providing us with a film from their catalogue, and the Alliance Francaise for sponsoring us with their venue. We are delighted to welcome Elixir on board as a corporate partner.

Follow link to Catalogue : https://oqg-primary-prod-content.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/pdf/1755182423037_niPb3z.pdf 

African Women in Cinema focus on : Women as Agents of Change

African Women in Cinema focus on :

Women as Agents of Change

Women as agents of change use myriad strategies for empowerment, sociopolitical activism and engagement, including leadership activism, mentorship, self-motivation, promoting education, empowering victims of domestic violence, participatory video training, among others.

Relevant articles published on the African Women in Cinema Blog are as follows (listing is ongoing):

 

The making of: Aïcha Macky, empowering girls through participatory video training
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-making-of-aicha-macky-empowering.html
 

Women, Leadership and CNA Afrique, Cinema Numerique Ambulant - Travel Digital Cinema 
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2022/01/%20women-leadership-and-cna-afrique.html
 

Raja Amari : She had a dream
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2021/03/recent-films-raja-amari-she-had-dream.html
 

Gentille M Assih : Sortir de l’ombre | Into the Light  
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2021/04/vues-dafrique-2021-gentille-m-assih.html
 

Lobe N’Diaye: La femme lionne | The Woman Lionness
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/02/lobe-ndiaye-la-femme-lionne-woman.html
 

Laurentine Bayala : Elections couplées de 2012, les femmes burkinabé en marche | Coupled Elections of 2012, Burkinabe Women on the Move 
http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2014/05/laurentine-bayala-elections-couplees-de.html
 

African Women in Cinema addressing democracy, citizen empowerment and free and fair elections
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2020/11/african-women-in-cinema-addressing.html
 

African Women and Cinema and Leadership
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2009/06/african-women-in-cinema-leadership.html 

Go Fund Me: Nos Errances, un film de Sorana Munsya et Monique Mbeka Phoba

Go Fund Me: Nos Errances

un film de

Sorana Munsya et Monique Mbeka Phoba

 

Nos Errances retrace les parcours croisés de Clémentine Faïk-Nzuji, première professeure africaine dans une université belge, et Véronique Clette-Gakuba, militante et sociologue. À travers leurs récits, le documentaire explore l’errance de ces deux personnages dans un monde académique marqué par la discrimination.

 

Nos Errances retraces the intersected paths of Clementine Faik-Nzuji, the first African professor at a Belgian university, and activist/sociologist Véronique Clette-Gakuba. Through their stories, the documentary explores the peregrinations of these two figures in an academic world marked by discrimination. 

https://www.gofundme.com/f/nos-errances-un-documentaire-de-sorana-m-et-monique-mb

Africa Reframed - Sosena Solomon journeys across Africa to capture the continent’s rich cultural heritage

Africa Reframed

Sosena Solomon journeys across Africa to capture the continent’s rich cultural heritage

In a new 12-part film series commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the World Monuments Fund, Ethiopian-American filmmaker Sosena Solomon journeys across Africa to capture the continent’s rich cultural heritage and through the eyes of those who protect it.

Image Source: Forbes Africa : Solomon interviews a priest at Abuna Yemata Guh, an ancient monolithic church carved into the sandstone cliffs of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region (Image by Stephen Battle)

Also see: https://www.forbesafrica.com/entertainment/2025/07/31/africa-reframed-how-this-ethiopian-american-filmmaker-captured-the-continents-rich-culture/

Alice Diop talks about her project for a film adaption of Michel Leiris's Afrique fantôme (Phantom Africa)

Alice Diop talks about her project for a film adaption of Michel Leiris's Afrique fantôme (Phantom Africa)

 

In the context of the exhibition Misson Dakar-Djibouti (1931-1933) organized by the Musée du quai branly Jacques Chirac,  Alice Diop talks with Gaêlle Beaujean, head curator of the African collections of the museum, about her project for a film adaption of Michel Leiris's Afrique fantôme (Phantom Africa).

The exhibition is the culmination of four years of investigation into the conditions of acquisition of each object, conducted by French and African historians, archivists and researchers. Inventories, mission books, period correspondence from L'Afrique fantôme - the notebook kept by mission secretary Michel Leiris were probed and analyzed. The exhibition description is presented in this way:

Different perspectives on colonial history. The exhibition presents new research associated with one of the most emblematic missions of the 1930s.

Between 1931 and 1933, the 'Dakar-Djibouti Ethnographic and Linguistic Mission' journeyed through 14 African countries. Led by French ethnologist Marcel Griaule, it tested new methods of ethnographic survey and collection. In 1933, it contained over 3,000 objects, 6,000 natural specimens, as many photographs, 300 manuscripts, around 50 human remains, some 20 recordings and over 10,000 field notes resulting from observation 'surveys' or 'interrogations'. This scientific expedition also attracted a great deal of media attention with the publication of L'Afrique fantôme, the personal diary of the mission's secretary, Michel Leiris, in which he reveals the relations between the colonised and the colonialists, as well as the conditions under which the surveys and collections were carried out.

Through a selection of objects, photographs and archives, the exhibition revisits documented facts, placing at the heart of the subject the results of research and the current viewpoint of professionals from the African continent. These counter investigations, carried out jointly by a dozen African and French scientists, aim to retrace the conditions under which these heritages were acquired and collected in order to shed light on the colonial context and the stories of men and women who have remained anonymous until now.

For Alice Diop the political significance of L'Afrique fantôme as a report of the events that took place eighty years ago, is that it may now serve as a valid means to actually reclaim those objects that had been acquired in a totally fallacious and violent way.

She also views her film project as a form of counter-archive as a means to reinvent archives through fiction. Hence, giving an existence, an incarnation, a humanity, a visibility, to the people who have not been seen or filmed, heard or listened to, and in so doing, reveal their depth, intimacy, sensitivity.

 

Alice Diop follows the footsteps of Mati Diop’s Dahomey—which mixes fantasy fiction and documentary—from the basements of the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac to the presidential palace in Cotonou, who accompanies the return journey of illegally-acquired statues to their country of origin. She gives voice to both the stolen statues and the Beninese students, immersing the viewer within the heart of the postcolonial debate on the restitution of African material heritage by European countries. She describes the objective of the film: “to return to these twenty-six royal treasures their story, their voices, to make them the narrators and actors of their own epic return." Alice Diop’s project seeks to exhume the parts that remain silent, those in the shadows, the missing parts, the things that Michel Leiris did not see, could not see or omitted to say. Similar to Mati Diop it is also a means for her to free herself from the hegemony of western knowledge production. Mati Diop described her experience in this way:  “As a Franco-Senegalese, afro-descendant cineaste, I chose to be among those who refuse to forget, who refuse amnesia as a method.”