🌴 ADIFF NYC 2025: Mapping the Caribbean – Myth, Memory, and the Sound of Freedom

Get ready to sail into the extraordinary world of Caribbean cinema! The 33rd African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF NYC 2025) is proud to present a captivating selection of films that redefine the region not as a tourist backdrop, but as a birthplace of radical thought, stunning art, and unbreakable resilience.

This year's program moves from Curaçao's mythical shores to the political streets of Guyana and the healing kitchens of Haiti, showing how the Caribbean consciousness—and its sound of freedom—persists across islands and diasporas.

A Poetic Conversation: Four Windows into the Caribbean Soul

Our selection is organized into four powerful thematic clusters, each offering a unique lens on the region’s profound and complex relationship with history, identity, and art.

🎨 1. The Felix de Rooy Circle & Colonial Memory

This section explores cinematic mythmaking rooted in Afro-Caribbean spirituality and colonial critique, anchored by the legacy of Curaçaoan visionary Felix de Rooy.

Don't miss Almacita, Soul of Desolato (Dir. Felix de Rooy, Curaçao)—a mythic allegory. Be sure to attend the screening of the documentary portrait Nomad in No Man’s Land (Dir. Hester Jonkhout, NL/Curaçao) and the accompanying panel discussion focused on the artist, Felix de Rooy.

We are also proud to include the Danish film Empire (Dir. Frederikke Aspöck, Denmark), set in St. Croix, the Danish West Indies, 1848. This historical drama explores the complex and painful dynamics of race and class among women of color when Anna, a free woman, owns her close friend, the enslaved Petrine, just as rumors of rebellion begin to swirl. It's a critical look at the systems of power that fractured community.

Also featuring: Ava & Gabriel: A Love Story (Dir. Felix de Rooy, Curaçao) and Kasita (Another Building #3) (Dir. Gabri Christa, Curaçao/Netherlands).

🌴 2. Islands of Women, Heritage & Healing

These films showcase a distinctly Caribbean feminist sensibility—stories of women confronting history, community, and inherited trauma through ritual, art, and medicine. We spotlight Love Offside (Dir. Dale S. Lewis, Jamaica), a refreshing Jamaican sports romance that firmly celebrates women’s strength and cultural healing rooted in local life. The women in these films are the keepers of collective memory.

Also featuring: She Island (Dir. Raven Irabor & Sira Marissa Lewis, Trinidad & Tobago / USA), Mother Suriname – Mama Sranan (Dir. Tessa Leuwsha, Suriname), and Sugar Island (Dir. Johanné Gómez Terrero, Dominican Republic).

🕊️ 3. Revolution & Intellectual Resistance

The Caribbean is an ideological birthplace, producing thinkers who shaped global decolonization. This cluster features films that articulate the region’s global political voice, from Frantz Fanon to Walter Rodney. See Closing Night film Fanon (Dir. Jean-Claude Barny, Guadeloupe/Trinidad), which dramatizes Frantz Fanon’s radicalization in 1950s Algeria, and Walter Rodney: What They Don’t Want You to Know (Dir. Arlen Harris & Daniyal Harris-Vajda, UK/Guyana), which investigates the political assassination and enduring legacy of the Guyanese scholar.

Also featured in the Pan-African Legacies – Fanon & Malcolm X program: Frantz Fanon: His Life, His Struggle, His Work (Dir. Cheikh Djemaï, Algeria/Martinique).

🌎 4. Caribbean Diaspora & Transnational Resonance

In this section, we trace how home travels. Caribbean consciousness is not fixed but portable, adapting and thriving across borders. We highlight Village Keeper (Dir. Karen Chapman, Canada), an intergenerational Jamaican-Canadian family drama that anchors Black Canadian cinema in Caribbean motherhood and memory. We also include The Last Meal (Dir. Maryse Legagneur, Haiti) because it brilliantly uses a Haitian return narrative—where ancestral food becomes a sensory portal between continents and versions of self.

Also featuring: Nomad in No Man’s Land (Dir. Hester Jonkhout, Curaçao Curaçao / Netherlands), The Story of Lovers Rock (Dir. Menelik Shabazz, UK) and Blacks Britannica (Dir. David Koff, UK)

The Caribbean selection at ADIFF NYC 2025 affirms that the region is a living archive of emotion and resilience, one where memory, art, and politics meet in a potent dance.

Ready to explore the full lineup?

👉 Check the full schedule and grab your tickets here: adiffnyc.eventive.org/schedule

We can't wait to see you at the festival!