PANEL: Who Heals When We Film?
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PANEL: Who Heals When We Film?
Healing is the quiet centre of this year’s programme – not as a final destination, but as an open, often contradictory process. This panel brings together filmmakers from the festival selection to explore what it means to heal through cinema: for those who make films, for the people whose lives are portrayed on screen, and for the audiences who engage with them. How can films create spaces where grief, resistance, and hope can coexist? From music and rituals to protest and documentary testimony, the guests discuss the camera as a tool for engagement, listening, and healing—and the role cinema can play in times of social and political crisis.
With Patience Nitumwesiga, Fradique & Khalid Shamis
Language: English
PANEL: Who Heals When We Film? , , 90 min
Guests
Patience Nitumwesiga’s short films have screened at the Locarno Film Festival, the Berlinale, and numerous other festivals worldwide. Her first feature-length documentary, THE WOMAN WHO POKED THE LEOPARD, a humanist portrait of one of Africa’s most prominent political prisoners, premiered at DOK Leipzig and IDFA in 2025, where it won two awards at DOK Leipzig. She is currently developing her first fiction feature, HOW TO FORGET YOUR NAME. Born in the mountains of Buhweju, Nitumwesiga studied at Makerere University and participated in programs including Locarno Open Doors, Maisha Film Lab, and Talents Durban. Recurring themes in her work include precolonial values, death, African utopianism, and gender deconstruction. She is a co-founder of SHAGIKA, a film and storytelling production company based in Kampala, Uganda.
Fradique is one of the leading directors of Angolan cinema. In 2020, he made his first feature film, AR CONDICIONADO, which was selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam, among others. He is currently working on his second feature film HOLD TIME FOR ME and is curating for the AFFK.
Khalid Shamis is an editor, film educator, director, and producer with more than 25 years of experience in the film industry. His work focuses on supporting independent filmmaking and story development across Africa. He teaches and mentors filmmakers in educational and funding contexts and regularly serves as a jury member at film festivals and as a consultant for film funds. Shamis is a board member of the South African Guild of Editors and the Durban Film Mart Institute, and the founder of Rough Cut Lab Africa, a development programme for independent African films at the rough-cut stage. His best-known directorial works include IMAM AND I and THE COLONEL’S STRAY DOGS.