Closer To Home - The Restoration of Leighton House Museum

Director: Frederique Cifuentes Morgan

Year: 2011

Frédérique Cifuentes's first documentary film, Cinema in Sudan: Conversation with Gadalla Gubara, builds up a portrait of a great Sudanese film-maker, Gadalla Gubara. He was one of the pioneers of cinema in Africa. Through his oeuvre, Gadalla reveals to us a Sudan both mysterious and misunderstood. Despite censorship and lack of financial support over sixty years, he has produced cinema that is independent and unique in a country where freedom of expression is a rare luxury. The film Conversations with Gadalla Gubara retraces the struggle of a man who received the 2006 Award for Excellence for his career at the Africa Academy Awards, Nigeria. Gadalla was a person with a unique character: a Sudanese of great charm, caustic in his criticism of film-making, a humorist of refinement whose blindness has not tempered the rebel in him. He was, moreover, one of the last great figures of African cinema still with us. He knew the ending of the colonial era, saw the pomp and the disillusion, watched as his country sank into the depths of obscurantism. In 1969, Gadalla and his friends, Ousmane Sembene, Trinté Bassori, Mustapha Alassane came up with a revolutionary idea: FESPACO.

Director: Jake J Smith

Year: 2026

For the first time in 30 years, a film crew gains rare access to Pennsylvania’s maximum-security women’s prisons. Inside, The Lady Lifers – a band led by former soul singer Naomi Blount – turn grief into music and defiance. Though Naomi never took a life, she is serving life without parole. To have any hope of freedom, she must express guilt she does not feel – a cruel paradox of the justice system. As her music echoes beyond the prison walls and reaches the public, lawmakers and activists, the question remains: Will her voice be enough to finally set her free - and to free those she left behind? Official Selection Durban International Film Festival 2026

Director: Pamela Ryder

Year: 2026

A kind hearted, working class volunteer dons the Santa suit each year, quietly transforming his community through simple acts of generosity, testing whether his belief in giving can inspire others to carry the magic forward.