Canada’s commercial capital is abuzz as 2018’s Toronto International Film Festival just kicked off, and many of the films which will show are already generating a stir globally.

TIFF is gaining a reputation as the festival where Oscar winning turns are first identified, and with its mission to enlighten people and shape the way we see the world through film, being an official TIFF selection is kind of a big deal. Here, we highlight the 4 African led films and documentaries we can’t wait to see at this year’s festival with synopses from TIFF below.

ICYMI: BellaNaija and BellaNaija Style are all about TIFF2018 this week! Follow the conversation on social #BNAtTIFF18,#BNSTakesTIFF18 and #BellaNaijaAtTIFF2018

Lionheart

Nollywood superstar Genevieve Nnaji returns to TIFF, this time behind the camera with a directorial debut that puts a new spin on the old adage “family and business don’t mix.” In order to save her father’s ailing bus company, competent but perennially overlooked Adaeze must find a way to work alongside feckless uncle Godswill, in this sharp and comically observed debut.

Learn more about this film here.

Farming

One of the most shocking social experiments in recent UK history involved the farming out of Nigerian children to white families in the 1960s – this is the subject matter of actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje‘s electrifying feature directorial debut.  Drawing on his own life for this film about a London-born Nigerian child voluntarily placed in a white working-class home as part of a 1960s social experiment, stranding him between cultures and sending him through adolescence on a twisting journey from destructive self-loathing to perseverance.

Learn more about this film here.

Sew the Winter To My Skin

Touted as one of the most exciting voices in South African filmmaking, Jahmil X.T. Qubeka returns to TIFF after his provocative and genre-pushing 2013 feature Of Good Report with this rousing reimagining of the hunt for John Kepe, an outlaw in 1950s South Africa who robbed from white colonist farmers and gave to the impoverished Indigenous poor, becoming a threat to the foundations of Apartheid society.

Learn more about this film here.

Rafiki

After making its worldwide debut at Cannes earlier this year, Rafiki lands at TIFF2018 continuing its trailblazing film festival run. Wanuri Kahiu‘s latest film charts a precarious love story between two young Kenyan women in a society where homosexuality is banned.

Learn more about this film here.