What Remains: Reclaiming Memories, Materialities, and Embodied Histories in African Cinema
Co-presented by the Toronto International Film Festival and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.
Listen more often
to things than to beings
the voice of the fire
the water that speaks
the voice of the wind
the bush that weeps
this is the ancestors breathing...
“Les souffles” by Birago Diop
When does the past become history? When experiences of colonization, struggle, and violence erase, bury, or displace the memories, materialities, and the very bodies of the past - what remains?
The What Remains film series is an exciting co-presentation by the TIFF Cinematheque and the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, co-curated by Dr. Julie MacArthur and Dr. Alison MacAulay. This series highlights an emerging trend in African cinema, exploring how filmmakers on the continent are using film and visual media to confront these questions and reclaim history in visually striking and deeply personal ways.
This series examines how African filmmakers of diverse backgrounds, often in collaboration with scholars and researchers, use film to reconstitute what remains of the past. Whether through fiction or documentary, these films work to recover missing and fragmented remnants —– in archives, material objects, personal memories, and physical bodies —– to reconcile difficult and often violent histories. While spotlighting films from across the African continent, this series grapples with urgent global questions around history and reconciliation, archival ownership and access, and legacies of settler colonialism and violence. The result is a rich tapestry of unique perspectives that unearth hidden memories, lost archives, and untold stories that challenge viewers to reconsider the ongoing traumas of historical loss, reclaim the present, and imagine new futures.
Join us for this exciting and diverse line-up of African documentary and fiction films that span time, space, and genre: from fast-paced investigative documentaries and surrealist docufictions to meditative experimental shorts and gripping crime thrillers. Experience the breadth and vibrancy of African cinema, featuring films from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Namibia, and Rwanda. Select screenings will include special guests and post-screening Q&As! All screenings are open to the public, subject to ticket availability. Please see the series programme for more details.
The What Remains series runs January 9 –16, 2026, with screenings at the TIFF Lightbox and Innis Town Hall Theatre.
What Remains will also host a series of on-campus engagements at UTSG and UTM. Guest lectures and workshops will consider film’s role in the production and mobilization of knowledge, the ethics of and approaches to collaboration, and how academic research creation can address global themes of historical reclamation, legacies of colonialism and violence, and public memory.
Co-Presented by:
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For more information about our sponsors, see Sponsors.
Series artwork designed by Sophie Zhang.