Important Dates

For the 18th time, the film festival Cinema Africa presents a series of films from the African continent. All movies will be shown in Cineplex Bayreuth. Tickets will be available online or at the boxoffice.

26 October 2026, 8 pm

Mahad Ahmed / Vinzenco Carvalho: Bufis (Daydreamers)

105 min | Drama | Kenya, 2023 | English, Somali, KiSwahili

Once a year the US embassy opens the Green Card Lottery for families to apply. Assad, the best fixer in town, creates fake families out of dispersed refugees. He gives a chance to those who don’t have one: to a runaway bride, a prostitute, a single father, a former war lord and many more. Assad writes a script and coaches them until their story is truly believable. Because only the best story will get them to the United States. In doing so, Assad achieves much more than just a new life for his fake families. He instills hope in all of them.

Nairobi’s Eastleigh district is home to many exiled Somalis who have fled the civil war in their home country. Once a year, when the Kenyan US embassy opens its doors for the visa lottery, Assad’s time has come: the gifted storyteller puts together fake families from the scattered refugees, develops fictitious family stories and coaches his clients until their stories are truly credible. Based on true events, BUFIS is a humorous and touching story about lifelong dreams.

MAHAD AHMED is a Kenyan actor, director, screenwriter and founder of the Nairobi-based collective Somali React. He earned his certificate in film and television production at the prestigious African Digital Media Institute and later worked as a director and editor for RTN TV. Ahmed played the lead role of Momo in WAZI?FM. The film was awarded the Golden Dhow at the ZIFF Awards 2015, among others. He was also part of the cast of the Oscar-nominated short film WATU WOTE and worked as a camera assistant on the set of AYAANLE and THERE IS NOTHING TO DO as an assistant director with the famous Nairobi-based collective The Nest under the direction of acclaimed director Jim Chuchu.

VINCENZO CAVALLO is a writer, director, producer and researcher based in Kenya since 2007. He participated in Berlinale Talents 2018 and Berlinale Talent Co-Production Market Lab 2019, where he also won the VFF Award with BUFIS. His first interactive film AFRICAN SPACE MAKERS was in the official competition of XR Venice 2020 and screened at AFRIKAMERA in 2023. His first feature film WAZI?FM, a Somali-Kenyan thriller, won three awards at the 2015 Zanzibar Film Festival, including the Golden Dhow. Cavallo wrote, directed and co-produced a twelve-part television series about Afro-Colombian music, won the prize for best comedy at the Berlin Web Festival and the prize for best director at the Roma Web Festival with a web series about West African migrants in southern Italy.

Watch the trailer here