FilmAid Film Festival

  • Celebrating Stories.
  • Amplifying Voices.
  • Inspiring Change.

About This Year’s Festival

19th Annual Film Festival

The FilmAid Kenya Film Festival celebrates the creativity, resilience, and talent of emerging filmmakers from refugee and host communities.

  • Theme 2026: Stories That Connect Us

  • Dates: 25 – 26 September 2026

  • Location: Nairobi, Kakuma & Dadaab Kenya

Our Journey

The power of storytelling

FilmAid Kenya launched in 1999 delivering critical information to refugees displaced by the conflict in Kosovo. Since then programs have been implemented in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti, Thailand, and the US. FilmAid Kenya has offices in Nairobi and in Dadaab and Kakuma Refugee Camps.

FilmAid Kenya is an Africa-focused Development and Humanitarian Communications Organization that harnesses the power and influence of media, arts, and technology to increase access to education, skills, learning, advocacy, and engaging with communities in the provision of critical information.

Since 2001, FilmAid Kenya has used participatory, culturally respectful, and inclusive approaches, to provide opportunities for creative expression, empower communities to tell their own stories in their own voice, and engage in their communities’ informational needs to defend their dignity and lead safe & healthy lives in the East and Horn of Africa.

Festival Information and Background

Now in its 16th year, the annual FilmAid Kenya Film Festival celebrates the creative self-expression and ambitious determination of young refugees and host community filmmakers demanding to tell their own stories and represent their communities. This multi-day event celebrates the work of young refugee and host community filmmakers through activities such as film screening sessions within the refugee camps and host communities. These filmmakers , through the festival, are able to reach Kenyan citizens, the media and policy makers through the enhancement of dialogue sessions on issues affecting them through their creative works with the wider Kenyan (and global) community.

Background

Held annually in Kenya, FilmAid Kenya Film Festival strives to fulfill FilmAid Kenya’s vision of informing, inspiring, and empowering refugees. Every year, FilmAid Kenya trains, supports, and empowers more than 600 refugee youth to tell their own stories through film, photography, theatre, journalism, radio, and digital media education, with the aim to give young refugees, and their hosting communities, the creative and technical skills necessary to explore issues within their communities and express themselves creatively.

About Skills and Social Development Strategic Program Area

FilmAid Kenya creates sustainable communication production and dissemination capacity by providing affected communities with training and mentoring on film, photography, journalism, radio and digital media. Under this Strategic Program Area, we are building the capacity of the affected communities in media production, enabling them to tell their own stories in their own voice, and enhancing social and economic wellbeing through media production.

FilmAid Kenya’s Media and Entrepreneurship and Creative Arts & Self-Expressive training programs provide youth with the technical skills necessary to explore issues within their own communities and to express themselves creatively. FilmAid is also building the self-reliance of these youth who through our network of Multi-media Hubs receive ongoing mentoring and technical support as they create sustainable enterprises and economic opportunities within their communities.

Our Partners