The festival runs from Friday, 9 November to Saturday, 17 November and the full schedule will be available on the Joburg Film Festival website.

Various groups of industry players will have the opportunity to engage with one another and local audiences in a dialogue around South Africa's burgeoning cinema.

The Joburg Film Festival curator Mozambican filmmaker Pedro Pimenta, who is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of the United States, and his team have selected 40 African and internationally curated releases from various countries.

Pimenta says, "We are very excited to bring an exceptionally curated selection of 40 films from Africa and the diaspora as well as the world to the Joburg Film Festival this year."

"Each film reflects a part of the kaleidoscope that is African and diasporic cinema in conversation with films from Europe, America, Latin America and the Middle East," he adds. 

"The documentary, fiction and animation films to be showcased through the festival share in their curational vision the need to connect with audiences," he says. 

"It is very concerning to realise that a vibrant industry like the one in South Africa is suffering from a disconnection with its vast audience . The Joburg Film Festival, at its small scale, aims to address this imbalance as we believe the ultimate raison d’être of films is to reach and impact audiences," adds Pimenta. 

The films being screened will include the premieres of the documentary Dying for Gold by Catherine Meyburgh and Richard Pakleppa, Matwetwe by Kagiso Lediga as well as animation features like Funan and Frutitoons – a 90-minute animation package.

The festival will also be showing the Kenyan film Rafiki, which was banned in its home country and caused a lot of discussion on social media, including supporting tweets for allowing it to screened from Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o.

Having made headlines on both CNN and BBC, the movie made history in May as the first Kenyan movie to premier at the Cannes Film Festival.

Also confirmed for the programme is the documentary Everything Must Fall by Rehad Desai and Anita Khanna, which focuses on the Fees Must Fall movement in South Africa.

The experimental film M, by Finnish filmmaker Anna Erickson, aims to engage with eros and death through the guise of Marilyn Monroe to reflect upon shifting gender power relations.

Festival director Angie Mills adds, "The Joburg Film Festival is a rich opportunity for South African audiences to reclaim African cinema as well as the cinema of the world."

"The Joburg Film Festival proudly offers audiences films that they would not otherwise have the occasion to see. The films chosen for this year's festival speak to the central and unforgettable role cinema plays in our lives; films of telling compelling stories that connect us as people," Mills says. 

In its aim to forwarding a current conversation, the festival has organised a women-centred event with Sisters Working In Film and Television (SWIFT) at Constitution Hill on Sunday, 11 November to discuss gender equity in the film, television and cultural landscape of South Africa.

Through a film screening, the discussion will be navigated by a panel of guests (to be announced) in conversation with the audience around their daily lived experiences.

The Joburg Film Festival, supported by the Department of Arts and Culture and the National Film and Video Foundation, is partner to the DISCOP Film and Television market. The festival aims to offer an opportunity for over 2 000+ global, local and continental creatives and businesses to network.

In addition to the screenings at The Zone, Rosebank Cinema Nouveau and Ster Kinekor Maponya Mall, there will be screenings at the Kings Theatre in Alexandra.

The festival is open to the public, with various films to cater to filmgoers of different ages, genders and cultures.

The full festival schedule will be announced on the www.joburgfilmfestival.co.za website soon.

For more information, visit www.joburgfilmfestival.co.za. You can also follow the Joburg Film Festival on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.