Since 2019, the Pavillon Afriques has established itself as a central venue in the International Village. In 2025, it returned with an extensive program: masterclasses, workshops, round tables, and film screenings focusing on four main themes: animation, co-production, artificial intelligence, and Caribbean culture.
This year, the Africa Pavilion offered another new feature: "From Book to Screen," an initiative to promote the adaptation of African literary works for film.
Interviewed last year by Adweknow, Karine BARCLAIS, founder of the Afriques pavilion, highlighted another important aspect symbolized by an anecdote told by one of the directors of UNESCO, to whom one of his interlocutors had said: "It's good to see you up close because you're often so far away that we can't really talk to you, and now you're here."
Networking, the opportunity to meet people you don't know or only know through emails or phone conversations, is indeed extremely valuable and is one of the major assets of the Pavillon Afriques.
As the 2025 Cannes Film Festival draws to a close, the continent has been represented this year by only a small number of notable works.
Presented in the Un Certain Regard section, Akinola Davies Jr's My Father's Shadow immerses us in the private life of a family in Nigeria in the early 1990s, against the backdrop of political crisis. The film subtly addresses paternal absence, intergenerational transmission, and the search for meaning, while paying tribute to family resilience.
This is the first time a Nigerian film has been included in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival. The Nigerian government's efforts to promote creative industries in order to generate significant jobs and income by 2030 are symbolized by the Screen Nigeria initiative, which was launched in Cannes with a pavilion dedicated to Nigeria for the first time.
Apart from My Father’s Shadow, two other films represented the continent at Cannes this year:
- Promised Heaven (Tunisia) by Erige Sehiri – Un Certain Regard
Three women—an Ivorian pastor, a mother in exile, and a student—take in a young girl who survived a shipwreck. The film addresses the themes of migration and female solidarity. - Aisha Can’t Fly Away (Egypt) by Morad Mostafaa – Un Certain Regard
This social drama follows Aisha, a Somali caregiver living in Cairo, who faces precariousness and tensions between African migrants and the local population.
Another example is Thomas Ngijol's film Indomptables, which was selected for the Directors' Fortnight and is set in Yaoundé.
Despite these big names, 2025 is not a great year for African cinema, which has seen better days, particularly with Matty Diop winning the Grand Prix du Jury in 2019 with his film Atlantique.
Many observers believe that the main obstacle to the development of cinema is the lack of strategic vision on the part of politicians and financial circles, whose support is essential but still too discreet.
Nigeria's proactive approach, which is multiplying initiatives, is leading the way. The public authorities in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and other countries are also beginning to realize that creative industries generate income for the country and, above all, employment, particularly for young people, which bodes well for the future.