Interview: Mumbi Hinga and Safia Amadou on Africa Film Fest

Addy Fong had a chat with co-directors Mumbi Hinga and Safia Amadou about the Africa Film Fest.

Thank you for sitting down with me to chat about the Africa Film Festival. Can you talk about how the program has changed from your first year (2024) to this year? What have been the challenges given your festival it’s still new?

Mumbi: Yes, this is our third year. We would still say we are emerging. I don’t know what has changed but we’ve expanded. Our first year in 2024, we started off in Parramatta only at the Riverside Theatres. It’s very important for us to have a base in Western Sydney because that’s where a lot of the African community are based. However, on our second year, we had an opportunity to partner with the Sydney Opera House. So as of last year, we operated on two locations in Western Sydney, Parramatta, as well as at the Sydney Opera House. On top of that, we dared step outside Sydney and had the festival in Melbourne in March this year for three days. So that’s what has changed in terms of growth. Stories are always different, but the challenge is always trying to represent 54 countries because we’re still emerging, so we don’t have a very expansive program. We try and get a film from each region. I think we haven’t changed. We’re just trying really to be consistent.

Safia: For the first year, we only screened for two or three days. After that, we increased to four days. So, two days at the Opera House, in the city, and then two days at Western Sydney and being closer with the community. Yeah, that’s the things have changed from our perspective in terms of programming. But like Mumbi said, we’re trying. It’s always a challenge trying to represent 54 countries and including the diaspora as well.

Looking at the Africa Film Festival website, a big line of it speaks about the festival’s connection to community. You mentioned Parramatta, Western Sydney, and how a lot of the African community are based there. Other film festivals tend to be in the city, and access is limited for Western Sydney audiences. I attended last year and I remember watching a film on a Saturday at in Riverside where kids were screaming, it was a little chaotic, but I kind of loved it. Can you speak about your audience?

Safia: I would say that the community tends to come with families. They like to bring everybody, if they’re going to a screening, they prefer to come as a group, which is great because it does create a safe place. I think I remember the one that you’re talking about could potentially be the short film. Most of the filmmakers brought their family together to come and watch, which was very cute. I feel like it gives us another kind of dimension into why watching films could be different. I remember one of the films that we screened at Opera House last year, Pasa Faho, from this Nigerian from Melbourne. He was saying that watching the film in Australia was completely different from screening it in Africa because in Africa the emotion, everybody was going through emotion, were able to express this loudly. It was creating a completely different vibe, which I like a lot with our community. We tend to show emotion loudly, which is great. It just adds that kind of twist to the festival, which is cool, I think.

Mumbi: The thing I’d like to add that about bringing families is we don’t often get to see our stories on the screen. So, when there’s that opportunity, you really want to drag everyone along. Last year, people were sending us messages because we had sold out on some sessions. And they’re like, I need this for Father’s Day, for my father. Is there any chance that we can get this?  Even I, myself and Safia, we have young kids and we want them to be there. Our kids come to the opening night of the film festival, which is on a Thursday, on a school night. And it is very inconveniencing because they have to go to school the following day. You have to make arrangements as to what time are they going to sleep. But we need them to experience this opportunity because there is really no other opportunity. That’s one of the reasons why, despite being somewhere like the Opera House, it’s important for us to be in Sydney for that access, as you mentioned. We also want people to feel like if you’re going to own something, it can actually be within your home, because sometimes we feel like, our things are out there, someone else owns them, but we want to tell them, this is for us guys, this is for the community and it’s going to be within the community. That always comes with, challenges anyway. If we talk about things like funding, we know that the arts, for example, we are really asked to do a lot with very little resources. So that’s always challenging anyway, when you talk about the challenges of running a film festival. But it’s still very important for us to have it in Western Sydney and with an institution like Riverside Theatres, which was such an ally, closing for revisions for four years, then we are like, okay, where do we go? We’re now doing it at Event Cinemas without the partnership and the resources that we had with Riverside Theatres. So that’s a challenge, but we still are very determined to make sure that it is in the community rather than choosing to go somewhere else where we can get partnership.

Yeah, the Riverside expansion is a big thing. I wanted to ask about partnerships and support because I understand that Africa Film Fest is supported by ACE Parramatta? I’ve met Barry Gamba who I’m assuming you guys work with and know of Paul Struthers who is part of your programming team. How do they help you with the film festival? Can you speak about your relationship with them?

Mumbi: We’ve had a long relationship with ACE, Arts and Cultural Exchange. Before we launched the festival, Safia and myself, we are filmmakers, we’re film producers, ACE helped us develop proof of concepts, giving us some resources, helping us connect with the right people to tell the stories. When Safi and I had this idea to run the film festival, it was a no-brainer to reach out to ACE and see if this is something that they would be interested in supporting. What ACE did was more than support, ACE was like, we are happy to take Africa Film Fest, Australia as part of ACE. It would have been very, very difficult to be where we are had we not gotten the partnership that we did with Arts and Cultural Exchange.  

I always talk about an example of if you want to have a baby, it’s too expensive to have a baby nowadays, people are saying we can’t have it. But someone tells you, that’s fine, you go ahead and have the baby, we’ll help you take care of it. That’s what ACE literally did. They’ve given us lots of financial and in-kind support to bring the festival through. But also, when it comes to funding, one of the things that people told us is a new film festival does not get any funding. Partnering with ACE enabled us to get some funds. We applied for grants to be able to start. It’s very difficult to imagine where we would be today without the support of Arts and Cultural Exchange. 

Safia: We work with Paul Struthers, he works now with the Sydney Film Festival, as the documentary consultant. Having him on board was quite crucial, as Mumbi has mentioned, starting as a new festival for us, getting films to watch to be able to screen it is quite difficult. He already had that connection with international film distributors so that made it very easy for us to connect with them. Being able to share those films here with our Australian audiences was great. We also have advisory committee members from community here in Australia supporting the festival according to their expertise, which make it very, very well resourceful for us to be able to grow the festival.

Mumbi: We also partner with other organizations too. If you were to look at our screening, a lot of the films or programs are in partnership with community organizations. We try and see who does this, who does this story align with? What can we do to tell the story together but also tap into each other’s audiences? We try and see who we can partner with. We’ve got a few, if we’re talking about one of the films called Muganga, we’ve partnered with Refugee Council Australia. One of the films which is talking about racism at work, we’ve partnered with this organization called Amplify Black Women. So, we really do try our best, we don’t want to operate on a silo, we want the community to be involved in these stories.

There’s a lot of your films in your program that are in partnership with community. Do you reach out to the filmmaker, organisation you want to work with, or a mixture of both to find films that suit the program?

Safia: It could be both. For example, Skylark, Annette who is the founder of Amplify Black Women. She went to New York and watched this amazing thing and said, ‘hey, I met this black American woman doing very well in the community and one of the films has screened here. Would you be open to watch it and maybe considering for the film festival?’ When we watched it, we were like, okay, this is such a powerful film. It needs an audience. It needs a platform. Let’s screen it here so this is going to be an Australian premiere. We also need conversation because the topic that she was touching was so deeply rooted in our black woman trauma and we thought it would be great to have a safe space to talk about it. The director of this film is coming, and we are going to have a Q&A after the screening of Skylark on Sunday.

You both said that you have children. A lot of film programmers end up traveling to other countries to network and buy films. To create your diverse program do you travel or watch screeners or do people recommend films to you?

Mumbi: We travel on the laptop. That’s the travel we can afford. I would love to. It’s something that we always talk about because there is a very different experience when you meet people and have conversations when you go to those markets. However, we just don’t have the resources to travel around. Safia and I are parents with young children, so it’s very complicated to do such a thing. However, as we grow, it’s in our radar either in terms of the funding we get or even the team, having a team member who has a lot more flexibility to travel. But at the moment, we spend a lot of time online looking at what’s out there, what’s happening in other film festivals outside Africa, within Africa, what is being screened, and what are people excited about. Sometimes people just reach out to us and tell us, hey, we think this is great for you guys. But majority of the time, Safia and I are surfing the net.

Yeah, being a parent when the kids are asleep, you’re finally watching a film

Mumbi: Yes, we watch lots and lots and lots of films to get to the program.

There’s a limited number of days the fest is on and you can’t represent all of Africa. What’s the strategy to your programming in relation to gaining a diverse audience? Is it based on a particular theme? Particular countries?

Safia: We don’t put ourselves into boxes and we are open to watch and consider any kind of films. We do not want to limit ourselves. Mostly what we do, Mumbi and myself, is we look at the programming of each international film festival screening African films, see if that’s something that talks to us or we feel like it’s going to resonate here with Australian audiences. Then that will become our pick and we will watch it. Then Mumbi and I, we will have a conversation, ‘OK, what did you think about this film?’

It’s funny, the beginning of the year when we were starting the festival, I honestly thought Mumbi and I had the same taste of film and I was like, I feel like it’s going to become a challenge, but we have a completely different tastes and I did not realize that Mumbi will go more into arty type of film, where my brain will be like, ‘okay, it is a commercial, is it gonna sell or not?’ Mumbi will be like, ‘this is such a great and powerful film, we need to screen it’ and so it becomes a kind of battle we have, which is great. It works well in that sense I would say. Paul will be, ‘all right, which country is it representing?’ And he will be the middle person in between the two of us. So, it’s very cool.

Mumbi: Yeah, that’s right. That’s actually a good strength for the festival because if we both love the same thing, then we’ll never explore something outside what we like. As Sadia mentioned at the end of the day, as much as we want to tell the stories, we also want the people to come and watch the films. One of the things we think about is, how did this film perform in other film festivals? However, the beauty of having someone as experienced as Paul is he’s taught us that you don’t always have to worry about you know, is this going to be a full audience? Some stories you just want to tell them. For example, sometimes we want a family film, we don’t want everything to be 18 plus or like mature audience. We want to make sure that we include families. So in such situations, we have to think, okay, this is a family story and it’s important to give it a platform. It’s just a mix of a few things. Having different interests helps the festival be quite diverse. You asked if we feature each country, what we do is we try and feature the regions. We try and get something from North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, if we can. Now, the only challenge with that is not every year we’ll have films that have been released recently from those countries, from those regions. So you just have to try and consider that. However, fortunately, we do have a short film program, which is a session where we have a series of short films. And quite often we find that during that program, we get to represent films from a few places around Africa, but then also in Australia, which has been a big challenge for us. We know African Australians are creative. They have stories, but because of various reasons, these stories, they’re just not there. That’s one thing we noticed within our first year that we were not getting stories being told by local African Australians. Fortunately, during the four short film program, we get to have a few. This year we have a few of them and we’ll have the Q&A. So that’s always very exciting because the goal for the festival is not just to show films from Africa, but also from Africans that are here in Australia. In fact, we would be so excited if majority of the program was actually by African Australians.

Thankfully there’s more voices from people of colour coming up in industry, but you touched on the challenge and hopefully there’s more African Australian filmmakers shown. I’m projecting here but from my perspective a lot of women, people of colour, working class women, we often don’t tell out stories not because we can’t, but because of other priorities in our life. I have this hope that you both being the festival directors of Africa Film Fest, gives that kind of visibility. What’s your dream for this festival? What does it bring to the table for film festivals in general or for your own voice?

Safia: The festival is foremost a platform for the African Australian filmmakers to be able to amplify their voices and showcase their story. One really good example that Mumbi and I can share is the case study of a young Sudanese man who is an actor. The first year when we had our screening at the Riverside in 2024, he did not miss one screening. He was there from Saturday till Sunday and we ended up becoming friends. At the end, he came to us to say, ‘I’m gonna make a film for next year and you’re gonna screen it.’  I’m like, ‘okay, we really like this. Let’s see how we go.’ Next year he put his short film in, and he was able after that to screen his film at AFTRS. Now he’s getting job placements as a director. It is amazing. Knowing that we are creating a platform for our community to be able to showcase the film is incredible and it’s giving them, the courage to push and go do something. It’s fantastic. Very happy. Mumbi and I, we can’t wait to have one day an Australian premiere feature film for our opening night. It would be fantastic.

Why is your film festival in September? 

Mumbi: One thing that is very interesting about the film festival industry here in Australia is that they really are allies. What people do is you try and not to clash with another film festival. That’s part of the reason why September. However, our first one was in July, and we don’t like the cold. Safia was sick. She lost her voice. She got pneumonia. She got everything. 

Safia: I got everything. 

Mumbi: We decided July is definitely out. July, we just want to be doing the bare minimum, you know, mandatory things. We are not stuck to September. In fact, we are actually exploring the potential of doing it a little bit later in the year. The most important thing is to make sure that we’re not clashing with another film festival because at the end of the day, it’s not a competitive space. In fact, people are really, really allies. Festivals like Sydney Film Festival, Queer Screen, Antenna Film Festival, they all come in support. If we have anything that resonates with their audience, they will always share. We try and make sure that we’re not stepping on each other’s toes in that sense. Sso, September was just a good space because there was nothing else happening at the moment. Although now Queer Screen, they have their events in September. And for other reasons, because of a related event that happens in Western Australia. We are considering doing it a little bit later in the year, but we’re going to explore that after this.

I was looking at the ACE website for your previous programs. I remember last year or the year before, I went to your animation screening and you had a lot of panels and workshop stuff at ACE, but this year’s program, doesn’t seem to have that. There’s a Q&A panel at the Opera House. Is there a reason why there’s not as many guest workshop type chats this year?

Mumbi:  I know what you mean because of the animation. This is actually about storyteller. It’s very similar, but this one is specific for story. What we’ve done is we’ve brought people who have had experience in writing for feature film or web series or documentary. We have people with different experiences. A lot of the people within our network are still emerging. How do you take the idea out of your head and turn it into a script which someone else will be interested in supporting? So, it is quite similar, except that it’s not necessarily with the slides and PowerPoint presentation, it is a conversation with people who have experience turning their stories into a film or a series. They’re quite experienced so it is quite similar and it’s happening at the Opera House on the 4th so maybe it’s our wording that maybe hasn’t made it clear but it’s exactly what it is. This is in partnership with AFTRS.

Safia: Each year the programs change as well according to who we are partnering and collaborating with. The animation worked pretty well because we had at that time our relationship with Animal Logic and UTS and they were able to support us bringing the animator from Nigeria to come and do a workshop. Being able to put together a compilation of animation from Africa. So that was doable. All programming, depending on who we have at that time, collaborating with and partnering with. The art of storytelling that Mumbi is talking about, it is in partnership with AFTRS. That relationship has started since last year when we had an industry forum. It is from that we thought that it will be great to have a writer’s writing conversation for emerging filmmakers or even anybody who’s interested in screenwriting wanting to know what is the pathway of certain diverse voices who have been in the industry for such a long time.

How did the Melbourne version of your film festival go? Because you guys being based in Sydney, your networks are in Sydney. Did you already have Melbourne networks or was it a challenge? 

Safia: Actually, it went well. So well. Even us, we were quite shocked because we never been there. We didn’t know any of the African community. It was through that festival that we’re trying to reach out as many as possible of the African community there and trying to develop a relationship. We sold out most of the screening. Cinema Nova was a great ally because they already been there for such a long time. It is an independent cinema, and they were able to promote the festival throughout the network and the community came along. And also, it is an art space. It become quite easy, I think, to have people.

Mumbi: Melbourne was very responsive, honestly. We were like, what? But that’s the beauty of working with people, working with the community. So, we did something similar, trying to reach out to people who we feel like, you know, are active in the community. This is obviously a theory, there’s no research that has been done and tested, it could be true, but Sydney is very spread out. And so, to tell people from all areas of Sydney, come to this one space, it takes a lot longer. But for Melbourne, if you look at Cinema Nova, most places are within 20, 25 minutes. So that could be one of the reasons. I just feel like the community and the cinema as Safia mentioned, they were very, very instrumental in making this happen. They were very excited. This is the thing, when people are not used to seeing their stories on screen and there’s this opportunity for that to happen, people get excited about that. We saw that in Melbourne, even though the weather nearly killed us. It rained like crazy, but it was such a beautiful experience in Melbourne and that really, really encouraged us. There’s this hunger for stories to be told. People want to see themselves on screen, there are lots of creatives in Melbourne as well. They saw an opportunity to connect with a festival that could potentially help them as well.

Would you travel to other states for the film festival? If there’s the possibility to expand the program? Is that a dream of yours?

Mumbi: It is. It is not just a dream. Well, it is a dream anyway. But we’ve had conversations with people in Perth, in Adelaide, and there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a lot of potential. We’ve got people tapping us on the shoulder like, let’s do this. But the thing is, we don’t want to scale and dilute what we are still trying to build. Because at the end of the day, majority of the work is Safia and I. So, the two of us, we are watching all those films. As much as we have all these people supporting us, we still do a lot of the job. And so, we are always worried that spreading ourselves thin will mean that we’re having less time for Sydney. Even just having the festival in Melbourne meant that a lot of the stuff we could have been doing in Sydney was a little bit on hold. So, we have to be careful not to scale without having a strong foundation for that. But we would definitely, we hear from the community all the time. Even now, people are sending us messages when they see a film that they would want to watch. They’re like, can we have this in Brisbane, please? What can we do? So there is definitely a demand for that and it’s our dream. However, you know if anyone listens to this and they want us to know we are open but we just really want to make sure that we have the right support and resources to do that.

What other films that you guys recommend someone check out as part of this year’s program?

Mumbi: It’s really hard to choose but if I had to select, I would say:

The Eyes of Ghana (Fri 4 Sept): “A stunning documentary executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, about a 93-year-old cinematographer racing to save over a thousand lost films that documented Africa’s independence. It’s about who gets to keep the record of history and it’s powerful

The Art of storytelling (Friday 4th Sept)– We’ve brought together seriously experienced writers and filmmakers, who’ve done the work at the highest level. And they’re not coming to give the polished version. They’re going to tell the truth about this industry, the knockbacks, the breakthroughs, what it really takes to get your work noticed and made.

The fest is happening Sept 3rd – 6th at the Opera House and Event Cinemas Parramatta.  For tickets and info, go here: AFFA 2026

Interview by Addy Fong.