Harare is set to come alive as the International Images Film Festival for Women (IIFF) 2025 kicks off on August 22 with a powerful screening of Hanami, a 2024 co-production directed by Denise Fernandes.
This year’s theme, Women Make the World a Better Place, sets the tone for a week-long celebration of cinematic narratives that centre on female resilience, leadership and transformation.
Culminating on a high note, Home, a 2025 Kenyan short film by Adelle Onyango, will close the festival at the Alliance Française de Harare, underscoring the festival’s tradition of ending with a film that leaves a lasting impression.
With venues spread across Dzivarasekwa 1 Community Hall, Nhaka Gallery, National Gallery of Zimbabwe and Alliance Française, this year’s festival promises diverse storytelling from across the globe.
Founder and ICAPA director Tsitsi Dangarembga said IIFF was a festival held in Harare that provided a platform for film screening to rural and urban communities that promote and encourage audience engagement and dialogue.
IIFF is hosted every August each year in at least four venues, with approximately sixty narratives from across the globe under a selected theme.
A call for films in line with the theme is sent out, they are selected according to the different categories.
The best films in each category will be awarded at a closing and awards ceremony. The jury is made up of local and international filmmakers.
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Fernandes’ Hanami is a deeply poetic feature that interweaves memory, identity and migration through the lens of a Cape Verdean woman navigating life between continents.
Filmed across Cape Verde, Switzerland and Portugal, the film follows Rosa, a middle-aged woman who returns to her island home after decades of living in Europe.
With a striking visual language that evokes the transient beauty of cherry blossoms, which symbolises both fragility and renewal, Hanami explores Rosa’s inner conflict as she confronts the haunting silence of lost time and reclaims her cultural roots.
Through carefully layered flashbacks and dreamlike sequences, Fernandes crafts a narrative where femininity is not just observed, but actively celebrated through Rosa’s quiet but powerful awakening.
Closing the festival, Adelle Onyango’s Home is a poignant 20-minute short film that encapsulates the emotional complexity of returning to one’s roots after trauma.
Set in Nairobi, the film centres on Amina, a young woman who comes back to her childhood home following years in exile after surviving gender-based violence.
Told with unflinching intimacy and emotional realism, Home examines how personal spaces, often used as sanctuaries of safety, can become sites of pain, but also rebirth.
Through minimalistic settings and sharp, emotive performances, Onyango delivered a bold commentary on the psychological aftermath of abuse and the importance of survivor-led narratives in reclaiming agency.
As IIFF 2025 draws the curtain on its latest edition, it reaffirms its place as a cultural force that not only celebrates women’s stories but also challenges the world to listen more attentively.
From Rosa’s spiritual return in Hanami to Amina’s fierce reclamation in Home, the festival showcases films that more than entertain, as they provoke dialogue, inspire change and assert that, indeed, women do make the world a better place.
