The festival holding at the Dallas City Performance Hall, will climax on July 3, with the awards night. While ‘Oloibiri’ will open the festival, Uganda’s award-winning film, Remand will close the festival.

Also, screening during the festival is South African crime film, ‘Call Me Thief’, which was submitted for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards but was not nominated.

The founder and festival director, Kelechi Eke told newsmen, they are leaving no stone unturned in their bid to record a successful outing this year, adding that not less than 200 filmmakers from over 40 countries are expected to storm Dallas for the festival.

Giving more highlights of the festival, Kelechi explained the festival will commence on Friday, June 24, with shooting of short film and screening it on the closing night (June 24 — 29). Master Acting class with TAFF 2017 Host, Richard Mofe Damijo (RMD) holds June 30.

July 2, will be the charity dinner, where TAFF supports AVODA in its Breast Cancer Awareness and Screening Program in Africa (BCASPA), this will be followed with filmmakers soccer match on July 3.

According to Eke, “My expectation is to have a better festival than last year, with more film makers and African movie fans in attendance; and with more media coverage globally. We received better films this year, and some from very well-known film makers.”

Explaining why he established the festival, Eke, who is also a filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and actor stated that he set up the film festival to give Africans in diaspora a sense of belonging as well as promote the continent’s culture.

He said, “The African film industry is growing by the day. New creative filmmakers are emerging; better quality film production is on the rise. Yet, we do not have enough platforms to showcase African films and celebrate our filmmakers. There are several other challenges that African film makers face, ranging from lack of adequate finances to fund a film – to lacking distribution after managing to complete one – to piracy when the film finally makes it out there.”

“These facts make it discouraging for African filmmakers to even bother to produce another motion picture. But the passion and drive that many of us have continue to push us to not quit. Good quality films need a large budget for production and marketing just like we observe from our Hollywood counterparts where millions of dollars are spent in making one film,” he added.

He continues, “This makes their films unbeatable with quality in the film market. And to compete with such productions in various film festivals, makes it look as though we do not have films that are good enough. In fact, some of our story lines are better but we do not have the luxury to pay for the best visual effects.

“If given a quarter of the funds used to make some of Hollywood films, the African film maker could probably make three equally quality films. It is therefore difficult to compete with such films at a given festival. Hence, TAFF is born to showcase and celebrate some of our best films that would normally be overshadowed by the wealthier Hollywood productions,” he explained