Lioness (2023) — A Cameroonian Drama Exploring Youth, Resilience, and Unexpected Confinement Named Official Selection of the Alma Film Festival
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Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic — The Cameroonian drama Lioness (2023), directed and produced by Wasi Fathes, has been officially selected to screen at the Alma Film Festival.
The film follows a brave teenager who returns to her hometown for a holiday, only to find herself unexpectedly unable to leave. What begins as a temporary visit evolves into a deeply personal confrontation with identity, resilience, and circumstance. Through its restrained storytelling and emotional focus, Lioness explores the psychological transformation that emerges when autonomy is challenged and certainty disappears.
Rooted in emotional realism, the film presents a character-driven narrative that examines restricted mobility and the quiet strength forged under pressure. Through intimate framing and grounded performances, Lioness offers a portrait of resilience shaped not by spectacle, but by internal resolve.
The film will screen as part of a carefully curated block of films representing various works from across Sub-Saharan Africa, thoughtfully assembled by Elvis Buminang, Karl Safindah, and the team at Between Takes Magazine. Their curatorial leadership brings together a diverse range of voices and perspectives from the region, reinforcing the festival’s commitment to amplifying culturally rooted storytelling across the African continent.
Produced in Cameroon and showcasing local talent, Lioness contributes to the growing visibility of Central African cinema within the global film landscape. Its selection underscores the Alma Film Festival’s continued dedication to presenting socially relevant narratives and emerging creative voices from across the Global South.
Lioness will screen as part of the festival’s official program in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic. Screening dates and ticket information will be available through the festival’s official channels.
About the Alma Film Festival
The Alma Film Festival was created in response to structural gaps in the global film ecosystem. By design, it is a next-generation destination, experience-based film festival and cultural convening—one that functions as a cultural intelligence engine, bringing together filmmakers, scholars, technologists, artists, institutions, and audiences from across the Global South and its diasporas.
Rooted in scholarship, innovation, and deep audience engagement, Alma prioritizes fewer films with greater intentionality, creating space for meaningful dialogue, relationship-building, and long-term collaboration. With up to 80% of the program dedicated to Global South cinema, the festival showcases narrative features, documentaries, shorts, animation, experimental works, audio storytelling, and new media—centering films that engage cultural memory, social relevance, and creative innovation.
Programming is curated in partnership with global entities and agencies, reinforcing Alma’s role as a platform for shared authorship rather than extraction. Through this approach, the festival has cultivated a global community of stakeholders spanning more than 51 cities across 35 countries.
Beyond screenings, Alma integrates fellowships, symposia, performance laboratories, editorial platforms, and emerging technologies—positioning the festival not simply as an event, but as an ecosystem. Guided by the principle “The Necessity of Something New,” the Alma Film Festival advances cultural diplomacy, fosters cross-regional collaboration, and contributes to the development of sustainable creative economies worldwide.
At its core, the Alma Film Festival is a global gathering designed to nurture both ideas and people. It embraces a kaleidoscope of cultures while intentionally shifting the social dynamic from competition to connection—creating space for collaboration, understanding, and shared growth. Alma moves us from extraction to exchange, from visibility to value, and from presence to purpose.
We are doing something new.
There is a necessity for something new.
#AlmaFilmFestival
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