AFRIFF’s announces date of it’s 11th edition for November

The 2022 Sundance Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner follows Aisha (Anna Diop), a migrant from Senegal in West Africa, who is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York City.

Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S but becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life. As his arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.

The festival’s closing film is Toka Mcbaror’s Almajiri. The film follows Nafisat and Salihu, two young children who are separated from their parents from childhood by the cruel business of Alhaji Makarfi. The gullible villagers believe him, love him and even revere him more than the chiefs in the North. He is showered with gifts, praise, and bribes just to get their wards enlisted for his scholarship scheme, unknown to them, none of their children ever gets to see the wall of a school let alone have the liberty of pursuing a trade. They are beaten, brainwashed, and forced to become prostitutes, suicide bombers and Almajiris.