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For the 36th consecutive year, Portland Community College’s Cascade Festival of African Films has arrived to illuminate Black History Month, using cinema to create new conduits for community connection and explorations of heritage.
At the now longest-running African film festival in the U.S., this year’s lineup is stacked with films that examine the themes of migration, displacement, and reinvention, and the universal search for safety, purpose, and belonging—evergreen material that still feels particularly impactful at this moment in time.
The 2026 festival will feature 18 films from 16 different countries, launching Feb. 6 and running until March 7, with showings throughout Portland. “This festival is cherished by the community because it showcases stories from African people and its diaspora,” says festival director Eugénie Jolivett Fontana in a press release. “We invite people to celebrate brilliant African cinema and create moments that will linger long after Black History Month.”
WW previewed two of the festival’s films leading up to the event, Disco Afrika: A Malagasy Story and Katanga: The Dance of the Scorpions.
In Disco Afrika, 20-year-old Kwame lives as a sapphire miner, struggling against an imperialist takeover of the mineral-rich land he and his community have settled in. When Kwame’s closest compatriot is murdered by a faceless authority, he sets out on a journey back to his hometown, where he is confronted with his own legacy as a revolutionary amid a political awakening.
Disco Afrika’s score is deeply compelling, employing both contemporary compositions that jubilantly move the plot forward as well as deeper cuts that paint a portrait of a culture where, intergenerationally, the music is foundational—which hits differently when you’re watching from a country with the same musical devotion but a fraction of the musical history.
Every frame of Disco Afrika feels as if it could exist beyond the constraints of the film as a vivid, immaculately composed image, evoking the moods and fashions of the ’70s in comfortable juxtaposition against Kwame’s journey from miner to activist. The storytelling is precise, but it’s the sweeping audio and arresting visuals that truly uplift this film into the echelon of fine art.
Katanga, a royal-political noir filmed in black and white, delivers the visual energy of a stage production or soap opera rather than a glossy blockbuster, though the subject matter feels every inch as thrilling, and the performances are complex and nuanced enough to keep viewers’ rapt attention. And the fine detail of costume design—the royal vestments, military uniforms, and castwide costuming—is breathtaking even through the grayscale.
A failed conspiracy against the crown leads King Pazouknaam to appoint his cousin Katanga as head of the armed forces. Katanga consults a soothsayer, who tells him he will either succeed his cousin as king or die during a future coup.
In case you clocked it—yes, Katanga is a contemporary reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But you need not be familiar with the timeless plot to enjoy this artsy, minimalist drama, which is equally fascinating as a window into writer-director Dani Kouyaté’s sometimes abstract reinterpretation of the material.
CFAF launches with a pre-festival kickoff Thursday, Feb. 5, at PAM CUT at the Whitsell Auditorium on Free First Thursday, continuing Friday, Feb. 6, with a grand-opening Hollywood Theatre screening of The Bride Price, a comedy exploring the tradition of dowries and their misuse, by local director Ime Etuk and writer George N. Faux, both of whom are West African.
Additional festival highlights include the centerpiece film Black Tea, a romantic drama by renowned Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako; Women Filmmakers Week from March 5 to 7, featuring three films spotlighting African women directors; Family Fest showings on Saturday, Feb. 28, of the Kenyan comedy The Wall Street Boy and the family-friendly Somalian film The Village Next to Paradise at PCC’s Cascade Campus; and a Literature-to-Screen Spotlight event celebrating the intersection of African literature and cinema, featuring the heralded books to film So Long a Letter (Mariama Bâ), The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka, and the aforementioned Katanga: The Dance of the Scorpions.
SEE IT: 36th Annual Cascade Festival of African Films at Portland Community College–Cascade, africanfilmfestival.org. See website for venues and showtimes, Feb. 6–March 7. Free, on a first-come, first-served basis.
