New Film Festival, Kilifi Creek Festival, Launches With Aim to Become Kenya’s ‘Next Vibrant Film Hub’

The inaugural Kilifi Creek Festival, running from 11–18 October, brings together filmmakers, artists, and local communities for a seven-day celebration of film screenings, art exhibitions, fashion showcases, masterclasses, and public conversations. Set in carefully curated venues along the scenic Kilifi Creek, ranging from intimate waterfront settings to vibrant public areas, the festival will be held annually.

The festival is the result of a collaboration between Kilifi-based Terrace Consortium and the innovation initiative YORA – Year of Return Africa. It’s an artist-led, community-rooted celebration of creativity, storytelling, and shared cultural heritage.

This year’s theme, “Water is Memory, Movement and Magic,” acknowledges the beauty of the creek – its gleaming waters, ancient mangroves, and the communities whose lives revolve around one of Kilifi County’s most scenic landmarks.

The week-long event features 47 screenings with a lineup that includes 33 films from 15 African countries, presented at seven venues along the creek.

Featuring a mix of shorts and features, the lineup highlights Kenyan talent such as Mombasa-based director Omar Hamza with Sayari and Sukari, Lydia Matata with Float, Mark Wambui with Mawimbi, Vincent Mbaya with Sketchy Africans, and Ng’endo Mukii with her award-winning Disney animation Enkai.

The festival will also host American-Ugandan actor and filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, director of Memories of Love Returned, which will also be screened, among other African films like Sudan’s Khartoum and South Africa’s Inkabi.

“I’m proud to be a co-founder of the Kilifi Creek Festival in my adopted hometown. This festival is the culmination of the hard work by my fellow co-founders Mumo Liku and Saitabao Kaiyare, our talented Kilifi-based artists, and the YORA Awards,” says festival co-founder and filmmaker Zippy Kimundu (Our Land, Our Freedom, Widow Champion). “I’m deeply honoured and humbled to be part of this powerful step in putting Kilifi on the map as Kenya’s next vibrant hub for film, art, and storytelling.”

Still a nascent industry, Kenya doesn’t have many film festivals (at least those that are active year on year), but a few continue to grow and establish themselves. Among them is the NBO Film Festival (taking place from 16–26 October) and Kitale Film Week, whose next edition is set for February 2026 and is steadily building a strong film community outside Nairobi, where most film activities are concentrated.

There’s also the inconsistent, government-backed Kalasha International Film & TV Awards and Market, which is yet to take place in 2025, with no communication so far from the Kenya Film Commission.

The Kilifi Creek Festival is a welcome addition to the growing list of film festivals sprouting up outside Nairobi, engaging communities that are rarely included in industry activities and, in doing so, supporting audience development in areas that have long been overlooked – whether structurally or through a lack of engagement. It joins the likes of the Ateker International Film Festival, which launched in September 2025 in Lodwar, Turkana.

Whether these film festivals can actively fill the urgent need for industry growth, stronger cinema culture and wider audience development across the country remains to be seen. But the Kilifi Creek Festival stands on a firm promise. According to Kimundu, the festival seeks to decentralize the arts, bringing world-class cultural programming beyond urban centers and into the heart of nature and community.

“It’s a powerful gesture of renewal and reimagination – rooted in the local, yet resonating on an international stage,” she says. “This is also an eco-conscious festival that fosters harmony with its environment, committed to sustainability, and deeply engaged with local culture.

Kimundu’s sentiments are echoed by Tribeca Film Festival’s co-founder Craig Hatkoff who endorses the festival, saying, “The Kilifi Creek Festival offers stories that change the world, and it’s also a real opportunity to help spur local economic development and build more than a grassroots community.”

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