The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is set to host the North American premiere of ALAZAR, a captivating short film by celebrated Ethiopian filmmaker Beza Hailu Lemma. Known for his thought-provoking narratives and masterful cinematic style, Lemma's latest work offers a powerful exploration of faith, tradition, and the human spirit set against the backdrop of contemporary Ethiopia.
At the height of the golden age of reggae, some of Jamaica’s brightest stars left their homeland behind to shine their light in an unlikely hub of Caribbean creativity: Toronto.
Haitian-American filmmaker Monica Sorelle makes an impressive narrative feature debut with "Mountains," a soft yet poignant look into the lives of one immigrant family in Miami's Little Haiti. Premiering at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, the film unfolded its poetic narrative — inspired by Sorelle's own upbringing in Florida — and it mingled wonderfully with Atibon Nazaire's quietly searing performance as Xavier, a middle-aged Haitian demolition worker trapped within his insistent community-destroying cycle of gentrification.
The fantasy genre, whether in literature or film, has been known to be severely lacking in cultural diversity representation on mainstream platforms. But Black and other diverse creative voices do exist. Hands down, my new favourite fantasy-themed film is Haitian-Canadian director Henri Pardo's feature Kanaval, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
Thirty years after director Spike Lee's 1992 biopic Malcolm X, based on Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was released, the iconic African-American filmmaker returned to Saudi Arabia to screen the film publicly for the first time on the 30th anniversary of its release. History was made on December 3, 2022, during the second annual Red Sea International Film Festival.
The opening scene of French Burkinabé film director Cédric Ido's film La Gravité (The Gravity) is a powerful flashback sequence that sets the scene for this captivating dystopian tale set in the Parisian banlieue of Seine-Saint-Denis—the infamous "93" heralded in some of the best French rap tracks. Speaking to AfroToronto on a recent phone interview while in Toronto during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Ido discussed the many subtle and not-so-subtle references and homages to life on "la cité."
