When A Farm Goes Aflame is screening in the cinema for $15 on May 22 as part of New York African Film Festival.

The 29th New York African Film Festival is presented under the banner Visions of Freedom: tuning into diverse and interconnected notions of freedom pertinent to Africa, the diaspora, and the world at large. This year’s festival presents programs that recall activisms past and usher in new anthems of the future to embrace a united front for liberation and expression.

When A Farm Goes Aflame

Jide Tom Akinleminu, 2021, Germany, 112m

Danish, English and Yoruba with English subtitles

A filmmaker completes his debut film: a reflection on his parents' assumed monogamous long-distance marriage, as well as his own Nigerian background and identity. He thereafter accidentally discovers his father's secret: a second family throughout the last 30 years, a life secret that escaped the initial film. This revelation sends the filmmaker on a new quest, now focusing on his retired Danish mother and his newly acquainted younger Nigerian half-brother. When a Farm Goes Aflame is set in the aftermath of a lifetime of secrecy and denial. It attempts to bring together the stories and beliefs of each protagonist as they come to terms with their common past and shape their future. Moving fluidly between Denmark, Nigeria, Canada, and the USA, the film gently unfolds as a poetic and psychologically complex exploration of the meeting between western and African concepts of love, relationships, and family.

A Q&A with Jide Tom Akinleminu will follow the screening.