In 2024, my film festival, Mostra de Cinemas Africanos, welcomed professionals representing creative organisations from several African countries—Nigeria, South Africa, Mauritania, Senegal, Kenya, Libya, the Comoros Islands, Morocco, Cameroon, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Uganda, and Rwanda—to Salvador, Brazil.
We wanted these professionals to understand how the film industry operates in Brazil because they were deeply interested in collaborating with Brazilian creatives. We also wanted to offer Brazilian professionals an overview of what is happening across Africa—from North to South, and in the continent’s main languages.
Because Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country, everything at the festival— communication, catalogues, and film subtitles—needed to be translated into Portuguese to ensure that our audience could understand and fully engage with discussions. In the end, our Brazilian audience were fine but many of our African guests were frustrated.
They couldn’t watch films from African countries made in languages outside of what they speak and understand because our films were only subtitled in Portuguese, with no English or French options. It was an unusual problem for us.
But I don’t want to talk about my own festival—especially because it is a small-scale event designed as a showcase for contemporary African films for Brazilian audiences. It is not a global platform for African cinema. It is not FESPACO.
FESPACO’s uniqueness
Since around 2011 when I first became involved with African cinema, I have been aware of the significance of FESPACO. It is the largest and most influential African film festival, even as the pan-Africanist debate involving it and Tunisia’s Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage continues.
Whatever the case, the fact remains that FESPACO holds a unique status—it is the most symbolic and prestigious space for African filmmakers to present their work, celebrating both classic and contemporary African cinema. It is the most anticipated gathering for filmmakers and industry professionals from across the African film field, offering a rare and deeply immersive experience of festivity, passionate exchanges, and film screenings.
With the growing global interest in African cinema—evident in the increasing number of African film festivals outside the continent and the rising presence of African films at major international festivals—FESPACO has felt the effects of this movement. More and more people from around the world are coming to Ouagadougou to explore the landscape of African cinema. As a result, FESPACO is becoming a hub for international networking, attracting representatives from festivals such as TIFF, Visions du Réel, Berlinale, and Cannes. It is also of interest to Afro-diasporic filmmakers seeking a connection with the “motherland.”
FESPACO is the reference point. It is the international African film festival everyone has heard of and feels an obligation to embrace, honour, respect.
I bring all of this up because if your event has become a benchmark for its field and your audience extends beyond local attendees, it is expected that you present yourself as an international festival. FESPACO doesn’t quite do that—even as I acknowledge having mixed feelings about saying so.
How do I reconcile my belief that FESPACO needs significant improvements in terms of organisation and professionalism without resorting to a Eurocentric framework for evaluation? FESPACO is an African festival and I don’t want to be someone who measures an African event using European standards. But this is a complex issue because you do find western models in certain aspects of African filmmaking.
I once interviewed Jean-Pierre Bekolo, the Cameroonian filmmaker, and among the many insightful things he shared about African cinema, he pointed out that the budgeting structure used by many African filmmakers follows European and North American models—often incorporating budget lines that make no sense in certain African contexts.
As I said, it is a complex issue, perhaps one deserving of its own PhD thesis.
So, for now, let’s return to the festival, which I simultaneously loved and hated over the six days I spent in Burkina Faso. Why did FESPACO 2025 leave me with such a mix of emotions?
The Language Elephant in the Room
First and foremost: FESPACO cannot remain an exclusively French-speaking festival. It simply cannot be that in 2025 and in the future.
Like it or not, English is the dominant international language. And whether invited directly by FESPACO or traveling at their own expense, a significant number of the festival attendees are English speakers only. They cannot fully experience the festival because too few of the films are subtitled in English.
There is no valid excuse for this. And there’s a simple solution. Screen each film at least twice—once with French subtitles, once with English subtitles. Even better? Display both subtitles simultaneously. Many festivals in the Global South already do this—including Dakar Series, which I attended last year. There, every screening was subtitled in both languages, even if the film was already in one of them, making it far more accessible.
Would this require a larger budget and a strong technical team? Yes.
But budget clearly isn’t the issue for FESPACO. I accidentally came across the guest list for this year’s festival, and it was staggering—the festival is capable of covering flight tickets, accommodations, meals, and transportation for a large number of international guests. And yet, somehow, it cannot hire or employ a professional team to manage film screenings properly?
Even more shocking was the screening of a competition film that was not in French. This film (in an African language) had English subtitles only, although the filmmaker had provided French subtitles so that local audiences could watch it. The result? People walked out, leaving the filmmaker frustrated. Given that the film was up for an audience award, this was an oversight with unfair consequences.
Subtitling wasn’t the only issue. I attended screenings where films were projected in the wrong aspect ratio, cutting off parts of the moving image—and no one fixed it.
This sheer disregard for films, filmmakers, and audiences is inexcusable for any film festival—especially one of FESPACO’s calibre.
Chaotic Sidebars
The language barrier extends beyond screenings. It also affects Q&As, roundtables, industry activities, and press conferences.
I’m not sure how things were in previous editions, but in 2025, there were no proper Q&A sessions—at least not at the screenings I attended. Filmmakers with films in competition are invited by FESPACO, but there is no structured Q&A, nor is there anyone from the selection committee to support them during what should be a special moment in their careers. Having a film selected for FESPACO’s competition is described as an honour, yet the festival experience itself falls short of expectations, as there’s little or no meaningful engagement with the audience.
Then there’s the issue of roundtables.
Given that FESPACO attracts a wide range of film professionals from across Africa and beyond, the festival seizes the opportunity to host discussions featuring a diverse mix of invited and unplanned speakers. While this sounds great in theory, in practice, it often results in chaos.
For instance, I was invited to a roundtable only because I was already at the festival—having travelled to Ouagadougou at my own expense. The session featured both English and French speakers, with an audience divided between both languages. But there was no official translation. Instead, a few panellists took it upon themselves to translate the discussion, which slowed everything down, creating a fragmented experience for both audience and speakers.
Even more problematic were the Yennenga Coproduction pitching sessions. The 14 African projects pitched during the event naturally attracted many of the film professionals attending FESPACO. However, a significant number of them gave up watching the pitches due to the lack of English translation—despite almost all of the projects coming from French-speaking countries. Notably, Nigeria was the only fully English-speaking country represented, alongside Rwanda, which lists both English and French as official languages.
It goes without saying that the panel of judges evaluating the projects consisted of French speakers who conducted the entire session in French. This is unreasonable for a program that, according to the FESPACO website, “aims to foster collaboration and secure funding for African film projects by facilitating exchanges between producers, directors, distributors, and investors”.
How does one expect a genuinely productive and inclusive environment without providing proper translation support? How is this acceptable for an international film festival? Translation is mandatory—otherwise, true inclusivity and pan-Africanism will never be achieved.
My small African film festival in Brazil provides translation for everything and everyone. This particular oversight isn’t unique to FESPACO. Too many international festivals, including those in Africa, are guilty. But that doesn’t make it excusable.
Missed Press Opportunity
FESPACO’s press coverage is another disaster for non-French speakers. The festival offers special screenings for the press, featuring filmmakers in attendance. However, if a filmmaker doesn’t speak French, they are left completely unsupported, as no one is assigned to translate for them.
An easy fix? Expand the guest list to include film critics, journalists, and media professionals from different linguistic backgrounds—especially African people who are actively covering and reviewing African cinema. These professionals already exist, and FESPACO would greatly benefit from incorporating them into its official press strategy.
At the moment, however, press coverage at FESPACO remains local and limited—which is a major flaw for an event that markets itself as a pan-African festival for the world.
The Legend of FESPACO
What frustrates me most is that FESPACO proudly carries a pan-African ethos in its very name—in English, it means Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou—yet it seems incapable of putting that vision into practice.
As a film festival director myself, it was painful to witness how many of FESPACO’s issues could be easily fixed, especially given the abundance of highly skilled and proactive African film professionals who would be more than willing to collaborate in making FESPACO a truly professional event for African cinema lovers worldwide.
Some of them were very vocal about their displeasure during our interactions, and I loved to hear their ideas on how to make FESPACO get better and be taken seriously beyond its “myth”, as the critic Olivier Barlet put it in a recent article on the festival.
The myth of FESPACO is intertwined with its historical role in African cinema. Countless academic articles analyse its importance, and as an academic myself, I’m glad this history is being documented and studied. But I was let down attending FESPACO for the first time in 2025. While I felt fully immersed in its legendary symbolism, I also felt the festival’s stagnation.
Going forward
Despite all of these, I understand why filmmakers treasure the experience of screening at FESPACO. Even for those who have already premiered their films at major festivals worldwide, presenting work at FESPACO carries a unique significance. As I heard from several filmmakers, “It feels like coming home”.
Which leads me to reflect on my own discontent. Would FESPACO lose its mythical aura if it became a better-organized festival? What does it mean to be FESPACO when it comes to screening films and welcoming filmmakers? More importantly, what standards should be used to measure the “authenticity” of an African or Burkinabé approach to running a film festival?
Some might argue that FESPACO’s prestige remains intact, regardless of its organisational chaos. That, despite its flaws, the festival’s historical and cultural significance far outweighs its shortcomings.
I believe these arguments have merit—but they raise even bigger questions. And as someone deeply involved in African cinema, I was reminded by FESPACO 2025 that we need to ask better questions about these complex issues. And maybe that’s what keeps me going.
FESPACO was both a challenge and a reckoning. It was a confrontation with the unspoken “debt” I felt I owed for never having attended “the most important African film festival in the world”. But will FESPACO evolve beyond its mythical status? That, I suppose, remains to be seen.
Ana Camila Esteves is the co-founder, director, and curator of Mostra de Cinemas Africanos/Brazil African Film Festival
