ADIFF 2025: From Censored Classics to FESPACO Premieres, Harlem-Based Festival Returns with Global Lineup

The 33rd Annual African Diaspora International Film Festival returns to NYC from November 28 to December 14, 2025, with a powerful and essential lineup

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, November 24, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The 33rd Annual African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) returns to New York City from November 28 to December 14, 2025, with a powerful and essential lineup of over 70 films from more than 30 countries.

Founded in 1993, the festival’s mission is to expand traditional views by showcasing socially relevant, award-winning films about people of color from Peru to Zimbabwe, from the USA to Belgium, and from New Zealand to Jamaica, creating a vital dialogue between groundbreaking new voices and classic films.
In-person screenings will be held at key New York venues, including Teachers College, Columbia University; Cinema Village; and The Lenfest Center for the Arts. Additionally, a curated Mini Virtual Festival will make 20 titles accessible nationwide across the U.S. and Canada.

Festival Programs and Highlights:
• Opening Night Film: The in-person festival opens on Saturday, November 29, with the New York Premiere of The Dutchman, a modern, surreal psychological thriller adaptation of Amiri Baraka's explosive 1964 play. The screening will be followed by a Q&A and VIP Reception.

• Closing Night Film: ADIFF closes with the New York Premiere of Fanon, a powerful biographical drama tracing Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon’s formative years in 1950s Algeria.

• Centerpiece Screening: The festival highlights the unique history of the African Diaspora in India with the NY Premiere of Rhythm of Dammam. This powerful drama focuses on the Siddi community, whose family rituals and traditional Dammam music are used to address inter-generational trauma.

• Filmmaker Spotlight: ADIFF will host a special event and conversation with trailblazing director Leslie Harris, following a screening of the restored version of her landmark 1992 film, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.. Harris will discuss her role as one of the first Black women to write, direct, and produce a theatrically released feature film .

• Gala Screenings: The lineup also includes Gala screenings of festival standouts such as Sugar Island (Dominican Republic), a bold portrayal of identity and struggle that premiered at the Venice Film Festival and the US Premiere of the Moroccan thriller The Ants.

• Silenced Voices: Cinema and Censorship: This crucial program revisits critical films once banned or suppressed for challenging political, religious, or moral norms. Featured titles include the earliest surviving feature by the Black director Oscar Michaux, Within Our Gates (1920) censored due to Due raw scenes of racial violence, and Uptight by Jules Dassin (1968), which was suppressed for its sympathetic portrayal of Black militants. A Censorship and Cinema panel featuring legal scholar Tanya Katerí Hernández will be held on Friday, December 12.

• The festival showcases the breadth of the diaspora with an exceptional collection of films straight from major international festivals, including seven New York premieres from FESPACO (the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou). FESPACO is widely regarded as the mythical center of the Pan-African film universe and is the largest and most important film festival on the continent. Among those is the gripping moral thriller Diya, the Price of Blood (Chad), a film that also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

• The Francophone selection, supported by the OIF and Québec Government Office, highlights films from Canada, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Belgium, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Guadeloupe.

• Other films of note include the Afro-Brazilian historical epic Malês: The Revolt, a journey of resistance set in 1835 Salvador, and the urgent drama The Song of the Rifles (Burkina Faso), which follows a twelve-year-old forced into rebel ranks amid a civil war, charting his desperate fight to reclaim his humanity.
Festival passes and individual tickets for in-person and virtual screenings are available now at NYADIFF.org.

ABOUT THE AFRICAN DIASPORA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Founded in 1993 and based in Harlem, the African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) is a minority-led, 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to expanding understanding of the human experience of people of color worldwide through cinema. Its curated programs include socially relevant and award-winning films from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and beyond.

The 33rd Annual New York ADIFF is made possible with support from ArtMattan Films, NYSCA, The Harlem Community Development Corporation, The New York City Council for the Arts, West Harlem Development Corporation, UMEZ, the Office of Community Affairs at Teachers College, Columbia Univeristy, the Netherlands Consulate General, the Québec Government Office in New York and others.

Diarah N'Daw-Spech
African Diaspora International Film Festival
+1 212-864-1760
email us here

ADIFF New York 2025

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