Africa is/in the Future 2024

This ninth edition of the festival will focus on the polysemic and contemporary notions of emergence and resilience. To what do artistic practices perceived as emerging echo? How can we characterize, ultimately to valorize, the resiliency specific to these practices and their actors? What emerges here—is it not a continuation of what has been gathered elsewhere, and vice versa? By reconsidering emergence as the capacity to share, we will also focus on resilience as the capacity to preserve.

If Afro-diasporic narratives, long marginalized, are now centralized, revered, and celebrated, it is through the emergence and resilience of those who carry them. This edition celebrates the advent, but above all, the redefinition of these two notions, both symbolic and artistic and identity-based.

As with every edition, the festival is open to all, but a more targeted invitation is sent to Black and Afro-descendant people from the continent and diasporas in Brussels. Moreover, we will continue, as in previous editions, to highlight the initiatives & artistic proposals of Black and Afro-descendant people/artists from the continent and diasporas.

A Radical Duet, Onyeka Igwe, 28min


Terramater, Kantarama Gahigiri, 10min


Mulika, Maisha Maene, 14min


Bonnarien, Adiel Goliot, 20min

RECOGNITION is a Brussels-based community film screening programme that aims to highlight and celebrate the myriad stories of Africa and its diaspora.
The collective RECOGNITION , founded by Lyse Ishimwe Nsengiyumva in 2016, aims to promote the art, literature and culture of Africans and African diasporas in Brussels, and more recently internationally. The project aims to give greater visibility to works that are often marginalised in traditional media, through film screenings, workshops and exhibitions.

Its founder, Lyse Ishimwe, is also a film programmer for renowned festivals such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and a consultant for the Berlinale Forum. With RECOGNITION, she is building an inclusive, community-based space for the minority in our societies to share stories that reflect their experiences.