"The 16th Afrika Film Festival Köln will present 75 new films from Africa – with a wider focus on migration within Africa Let’s start with some numbers: there are currently 68 million displaced people worldwide, most of whom now reside in countries bordering their homelands. The wide range of r ... easons for their displacement is well known: war, democratic defi cits and economic deprivation. Only a small percentage of the world’s refugees (around 17 percent) make it to the comparatively rich Europe, while 30 percent of all refugees live in sub-Saharan African countries. If we include the Maghreb, the percentage of the world’s refugees accommodated in Africa swells to around 50. Migration within Africa is one of the key focal points of this year’s Afrika Film Festival Köln, with 25 fi lms in the main programme and many others in the supporting events that directly or indirectly address the issue." (Introduction) more

"Going to the cinema means going on a journey” reads one of the banners in Ouagadougou that have been put up to promote the legendary pan-African FESPACO film festival. Afrika Film Festival Köln has also been taking its guests on audiovisual journeys through African cinescapes for 25 years. More ... than 750 films from 45 African countries have been shown in Cologne since the first festival in 1992. They have showcased some hugely diverse and multi-faceted filmmaking talents from Africa and the global African diaspora [...] In addition to showing films relating to this year’s theme of “Land Grabbing and Migration”, one of the first ideas we came up with regarding the make-up of the festival programme was to present a retrospective with the highlights from the last 25 years. But this was soon scrapped due to the huge number of exciting new films that were submitted to FilmInitiativ in 2017 and the many discoveries at major festivals, such as those in Tunis, Ouagadougou and Durban. FilmInitiativ was ultimately again spoilt for choice, with more than 400 new features, documentaries and short films. We therefore decided to keep the focus on contemporary African cinema for the anniversary festival, and to complement the films with a small selection of classics." (Introduction) more