CONGRATULATIONS AND NOTES ON NFFF 2024
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our filmmakers, artists, panelists, juries, our partner (The Billie Holiday Theatre) and all our sponsors and supporters for making the 2024 Nova Frontier Film Festival a tremendous success. This year’s festival centered on the theme of “Dispossession,” a universal narrative vividly captured by our filmmakers across various cultures and historical contexts.
Now in its sixth year at the Billie Holiday Theatre, the Nova Frontier Film Festival continues to showcase thought-provoking films and art from and about the Global African Diaspora, the Middle East, and Latin America. The 2024 curated program featured standout premieres from Cannes, Locarno, and TIFF, alongside a diverse selection of timely films, panels, conversations, and performances. These works explored Dispossession through narratives of forced migration, economic marginalization, climate change, political conflicts, cultural erasure, exile, and the systemic oppression faced by women and queer communities.
This year's festival featured a dedicated day for experimental art films and performance art. Our multi-media performance, La Lucha de La Mujer by Bianca Golden powerfully portrayed Carmen, a Puerto Rican woman fighting against injustice in 1950s New York City. This narrative reveals the harsh realities women faced during medical experimentation on their pregnancies from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Raymond Pinto's Turn In The Path was a stirring multidisciplinary work combining 8mm film and live performance, depicting a journey to Lagos, Nigeria. The piece captures human and non-human interactions with intimate, evocative imagery. Its non-linear montage blurs reality and abstraction, inviting viewers to explore deeper truths.
RECAPS OF OF THE 2024 NFFF IN IMAGES
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RECAPS OF OF THE 2024 NFFF IN IMAGES --
We are excited to announce the winners of the 2024 festival. Congratulations to all from the NFFF team!
Our judges (Jessica Beshir, Brian C. Gonzalez, and Samir Ballou) have selected the following films as the winners.
BEST FEATURE FILM
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BEST FEATURE FILM --
Director Ramata-Toulaye Sy (Senegal/ France, Mali/ Qatar) 2023
Drama | 87 Mins | Rated PG
Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. The young married couple lives in a remote village in northern Senegal. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But for the rest of their tight-knit village, duty dictates that Adama soon accept the role of chief. The two lovers have their own plans… until something in the air changes. The rains do not come, the cattle begin to die, the men leave. The curse weighs on Adama's sense of duty, and the chasm between them drives Banel into a feverish, mystical chaos.
A Nova Frontier Film Festival alumnus, a rare debut feature that premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and Senegal's official submission to the 96th Academy Awards, Banel & Adama is a lush and lyrical West African dreamscape, a tragic romance that soars to the heights of longing and descends deep into the realm of myth as it sets its protagonists' perfect everlasting love on a collision course with their community’s traditions.
BEST SHORT FILMS
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BEST SHORT FILMS --
Director Michelle Keserwany, Noel Keserwany (France/Lebanon) 2023
Fiction | 30 Mins | Rated PG
Asma and Sarah, two women originally from the Levant, find themselves working in the same restaurant in the city of Lyon in France. Both bear the weight of a home they were forced to leave behind. Initially wary of each other, they gradually discover a common thread that binds them - one that dates back to when the Silk Road connected Lyon to their home countries.
In the midst of forced migrations, can we move past our animosity to find solace in each other?
Sirènes (Mermaids)
Director Sarah Malléon (Martinique) 2023
Drama | French Creole | 16 Mins | Rated PG
Daniel is a widowed father who lives in northern Martinique with his 8-year-old daughter, Soraya. Fisherman and restaurateur, he tries to make ends meet in a town hit by a strong economic and social crisis. His daily life is turned upside down the day his daughter decides to summon mermaids using a conch of lambi. If the little girl just wants to make friends, Daniel sees in his new obsession the risk of a dangerous invasion…
BEST ACTOR
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BEST ACTOR --
BEST EXPERIMENTAL
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BEST EXPERIMENTAL --
Director Daniela Yohannes, Julien Beramis (Guadeloupe) 2023
Experimental | 27 Mins | Rated PG
In 'Atopias: The Homeless Wanderer,' a Black woman embarks on a meditative journey through the wild Caribbean landscapes, confronting dreamlike memories and traumatic experiences. This exploration of migration, generational memory, and trauma reshapes her voyage, taking her deep into her subconscious, where she encounters her inner child and ventures into ancestral realms.
BEST EMERGING DIRECTORS
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BEST EMERGING DIRECTORS --
AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD
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AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD --
Caribbean Queen
Director Sekiya Dorsett (USA) 2024
Drama | 23 Mins | Rated PG
In Brooklyn's vibrant Caribbean community, a teen named Q clashes with tradition. Longing to join the West Indian Day Parade, Q must defy their restrictive family and Mohamed Q. Amin, Executive Director of Caribbean Equality Projecty of self-discovery, wielding glitter and a cutlass as weapons of joy and resistance.
OUTSTANDING WOMAN CONTENT CREATOR
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OUTSTANDING WOMAN CONTENT CREATOR --
PRESENTED BY NEW YORK WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION
Director: Chiemeka Offor (USA) 2024
Documentary | Experimental 15 Mins | Rated PG
In a realm of darkness, a young woman harnesses divine visions of God, light, and water to manifest her dreams, unlocking a mesmerizing inner universe of art, beauty, and movement beyond imagination. Black Dreams is a surreal, experimental documentary, an artistic testament to young, Black, queer artists in New York. As they peel back the layers, they unearth their own brilliance, discovering solace and kinship within their community, and a newfound sense that they are never truly alone. Black Dreams is evidence of our magic.