Black Europe Film Festival returned to Minneapolis for second year

The Black Europe Film Festival of Minneapolis–Saint Paul (BEFF MSP) hosted its second annual event February 19–22, with screenings at Main Cinema and Capri Theater. The festival showcased films from across the Black diaspora, offering a range of genres from science fiction and documentaries to family dramas and romantic comedies. 

The films presented Black experiences from a global perspective often underrepresented in mainstream media. This year’s festival carried the theme “Afro-Pasts and Afro-Futures,” conceived when curators noticed that many of the selected films explored the relationship between history and the future.

“It’s not the relationship that is about being stuck in the past, but how we negotiate with the history, memory and tradition in order to make a step toward the future,” said Lorenzo Fabbri, founder and organizer of BEFF MSP. “So it’s sort of like this movement, this negotiation between past and future that the films we have in the program this year talk about.”

BEFF MSP’s outreach director, Iman Mohamoud, emphasized the importance of creating space for present and future Black stories. “I think the question that we need to be asking is what possibility looks like right now, what do we mean by imagination and creativity, and I think the theme is especially fitting,” Mohamoud said.

Highlighting diaspora immigration

The festival included a special screening and discussion titled “The Right to Move, The Right to Stay,” featuring two films followed by a community conversation. Fabbri said the screening was organized in response to recent federal immigration enforcement actions, highlighting the lived realities of migration across the diaspora.

The first film, “The Afro-Elderly Project,” focused on the experiences of first- and second-generation immigrants. “There is so much focus on arriving, but there is not so much attention to what it means to stay and to get old and to age in a country that is not yours,” Fabbri said.

Another project, “The Travelers,” directed by David Bingong, follows a group of Sub-Saharan migrants attempting to cross from Africa to Spain, showing the perilous reality of the Mediterranean border, one of the deadliest in the world.

French basketball player and Minnesota Timberwolves center Ruby Gobert premiered his film, “No. 27,” documenting his journey as an athlete across France, Guadeloupe, and the United States. “It’s another kind of migration story that is different from the one we’re used to, but we also thought it was important to show another side,” Fabbri said.

Portraying Black joy

Mohamoud said organizers intentionally selected films that celebrate Black joy. “We want people to know that when we talk about Black stories or Black experiences, it’s not just doom and gloom. People should be seeing Black people in love, out on adventures, and discovering new things.” 

Fabbri elaborated, noting, “We’re all familiar with the ways Black bodies are often represented through pain, but the films we’ve seen here speak to so much more than that. Even when they connect to painful histories like migration, they still offer a beacon of hope. 

“They map out possibilities for change, for futurity, and for community. That’s why we believe it’s so important to create space for Black filmmakers to tell their own stories.”

Supporting diasporic arts

Attendee Machoshi Matsafu, who watched ‘The Last King of Brooklyn,” emphasized the importance of supporting Black filmmakers worldwide. “If you’re Black, everywhere else in the world you’re African. And so we need to show up for each other and for all the stories that are being told authentically and with integrity,” said Matsafu, who is from South Africa.

Matsafu also highlighted the need to celebrate all genres of Black film, including the playful and experimental, noting the lack of representation in mainstream media. “There’s been too many excuses in all forms of media where there hasn’t been enough highlighting of these stories that are so integral to the global majority. It is time to have those, and we’ll show up in whatever way we can,” Matsafu said.

For Mikaela Ayim, another attendee, the festival was a learning experience in seeing how Black American culture has influenced other diasporas. “I learned so much just by being in this space and watching “The Last King of Brooklyn,” but also seeing how special and influential American culture is here, maybe more specifically Black culture, and how there are walls that we have broken down or pushed in.”

Minneapolis-based musician Raycurt Johnson, who has performed extensively in Germany, said supporting diasporic arts fosters a sense of connectivity across Black communities. “We are living in the dynamics of colonization from each perspective: location, language, German, English, Spanish, but we are the diaspora telling these stories. We can show each other the similarities, but also the uniqueness because of location,” Johnson said.

For more information, visit www.mspfilm.org/black-europe-film-festival/. 

Aamira Redd is a freelance journalist and contributor for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder