Sinema Focus

Vincho Nchogu’s feature directorial debut, One Woman One Bra, is born out of her own years spent making promotional work for NGOs across East Africa, work that taught her how readily real stories get bent into a tidy “myth of redemption” for donors. This friction between authentic African stories and the stories that outside institutions want told of the African experience is a subject that curdles into the fiction that is One Woman One Bra, a Kenyan-Nigerian co-production.

Netflix has announced a new slate of South African TV shows and films set to release in 2026 while marking 10 years in South Africa at an event in Johannesburg. The slate includes returning series and film sequels such as Blood Legacy season two, premiering on 25 September; Seriously Single Too, the sequel to the 2020 film Seriously Single; and Another Disaster Holiday, which will premiere on 11 December. Stay ahead of Kenya & East Africa’s film and TV.

The Somalia National Pavilion will present a programme of contemporary Somali cinema at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia at Palazzo Caboto from 11–13 September 2026. Launched in May 2026, this marks Somalia’s first-ever national pavilion and the country’s first national participation at La Biennale di Venezia. Stay ahead of Kenya & East Africa’s film and TV.

After a three-year break from the director’s chair, Kenyan filmmaker Njue Kevin returns to direct his next film Blue Uniform. Described as “his most personal project to date”, Blue Uniform follows a mother whose search for her missing son leads her into the claustrophobic confines of a local police station. As the night stretches on, her desperate inquiry transforms into a tense confrontation with a system designed to delay, deny, and erase. Stay ahead of Kenya & East Africa’s film and TV.

NBO Film Festival will return to Nairobi from 15–25 October 2026 with its biggest programme yet, introducing two new competitive categories, its first filmmaker retrospective and an expanded industry programme, alongside screenings, community programmes, city dialogues and filmmaker conversations across four venues.

After a year on the international festival circuit, Kenyan-Nigerian co-production One Woman One Bra is finally coming home, with its official Kenyan premiere set for 10 September followed by a seven-day run at Prestige Cinema and Anga Cinema Diamond Plaza. But before its premiere in Nairobi, the film will first return to where its journey began in Loita.

East Africa will have a presence at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), running from 10–20 September, through Rwanda’s Ben’Imana and the Kenya-set international co-production Call Me Queen, which will screen in the Centrepiece programme and Market Screenings, respectively. Ben’Imana, the debut feature by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, made history as the first film by a Rwandan director to premiere in the Cannes Official Selection at the 79th Cannes Film Festival in May 2026.

Kenyan filmmaker Daudi Anguka is among storytellers from Kenya and Nigeria selected for the 2026 cohort of the Entertainment and Media Hubs Program, run by Africa No Filter in partnership with CcHub Creative Economy Practice.

Reuben Odanga’s second feature, Tides, is a rich mix of drama and music that affirms the goodness and faith still possible in a cold world like ours. It follows Salma (Sarah Hassan) and Biko (Brian Kabugi), a musician couple struggling to survive and pay the medical bills for their daughter’s rare condition, financial pressure that eventually pushes them into selling their bodies.

The Kenya-set international co-production Call Me Queen is set to release in Kenya on 30 October 2026, The official trailer has also been released ahead of its theatrical rollout. Set in Nairobi during the late 1990s AIDS crisis, Call Me Queen follows the bond between Queen, a Rwandan single mother living in a slum, and Anna, an Irish journalist, as they take on powerful pharmaceutical companies withholding life-saving treatment. Stay ahead of Kenya & East Africa’s film and TV.