DJARFOGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

DIFF26 — CALL FOR FILMS
From Chains to Cinema
One Story. Four Locations. One Transatlantic Vision.

The DjârFogo International Film Festival is honored to announce DIFF26 — 6th Edition, a Pan-African and transatlantic cinematic journey shaped by memory, resistance, and the transformative power of images.

DIFF was born in Cape Verde, Africa — on islands where the Atlantic does not only separate lands, but also carries wounds, voices, prayers, ships, songs, and unfinished returns. Here, at one of Africa’s Atlantic thresholds, the ocean carries the memory of the transatlantic slave trade alongside migration, survival, creativity, resistance, and the eternal will of a people to rise.

In 2026, as Cape Verde celebrates its historic first participation in the FIFA World Cup, DIFF26 celebrates another victory: the right of African people and their descendants to stand before the world and tell their own stories — not as shadows in someone else’s frame, but as authors of their own image, language, memory, and future.

Guided by the spirit of Ousmane Sembène, the father of African cinema, DIFF26 calls for a cinema that decolonizes the mind, breaks the inherited gaze, restores memory, and returns the screen to the people.

This is cinema as memory.
Cinema as resistance.
Cinema as return.
Cinema as liberation.
Cinema as the future speaking in images.

DIFF26 brings together Africa, the Diaspora, Lusophone/CPLP voices, Indigenous communities, the Global South, and world cinema — a living platform for memory, freedom, and shared futures.

In 2026, we proudly honor two powerful legacies:

ZÓZIMO BULBUL (1937–2013)
Afro-Brazilian filmmaker, actor, activist, and cinema pioneer whose work transformed the screen into a territory of identity, resistance, and self-representation.

TEODORA GOMES
Freedom fighter, feminist, women’s rights activist, and political leader whose life continues to illuminate struggles for justice, dignity, liberation, and the future of African people and their descendants.

Their legacies stand in conversation with the wider ancestral path opened by visionaries such as Ousmane Sembène, Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror, Amílcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara, and many others who remind us that image, memory, and liberation can never be separated.

Under the banner “Four Settings | One Scene,” DIFF26 will unfold across four cinematic territories:

Sal, Cape Verde — Opening Ceremony & Festival Program
July 9–12, 2026

Los Angeles, USA — Special Hollywood Program
September 4–5, 2026

Santiago, Cape Verde — City Convening & Screenings
November 2–4, 2026

Fogo, Cape Verde — Grand Volcanic Closing Ceremony
November 5–7, 2026

From ocean islands to Hollywood, from the city to volcanic ground, DIFF26 becomes one transatlantic screen — a place where histories meet, images rise, and the future is imagined through cinema.

The festival will feature screenings, masterclasses, industry panels, Pan-African pitch sessions, Africa Film Lab and CinéRise Africa programs, youth and community screenings, Diaspora spotlights, world premieres, cultural showcases, and satellite dialogues with partner universities, cultural institutions, and community spaces.

We welcome narrative features, documentaries, shorts, animation, student films, experimental works, and community-based cinema.

We invite filmmakers, students, artists, elders, cultural workers, and communities to submit films that confront silence, restore memory, challenge inherited narratives, and open new cinematic paths rooted in dignity.

DIFF does not only invest in films.
It invests in the future of African storytelling.

“DIFF was born in Cape Verde, Africa — where the Atlantic carries our wounds, wisdom, departures, and returns. As our islands celebrate a historic World Cup journey, DIFF26 honors those who carried our stories before they reached the screen: elders, freedom fighters, filmmakers, artists, and ancestors. From chains to cinema, we are reclaiming the image, returning it to the people, and opening a new transatlantic screen for memory, dignity, and the legacy of African cinema.”
Guenny K. Pires, Founding Director, DIFF

Submissions are now open through FilmFreeway.
Late Deadline: July 10, 2026
Submit now: https://filmfreeway.com/DjarFogoInternationalFilmFestival
Website: www.djarfogofilm.org
Contact: djarfogofilm@gmail.com | diff@djarfogofilm.org

Selected films must be prepared with PORTUGUESE and ENGLISH subtitles for screening.

DIFF26 — From Chains to Cinema
Where History Breaks and Images Rise.
One Story. Four Locations. One Transatlantic Vision.