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The Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has picked 12 movies for its Festival Favorites selection of standouts from the fest circuit, including U.K. Oscar submission Santosh, an Indian police procedural about two women who form an unlikely alliance directed by Sandhya Suri; and Chinese auteur Guan Hu’s Black Dog, which won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes.

Representing the U.S. in the lineup is Familiar Touch from director Sarah Friedland whose synopsis reads: “Arriving at an aged care facility, Ruth thinks she is in a fancy hotel on a date — with a man who is actually her son. Gradually, she reconciles herself to the life she has now.” The film had its world premiere in the Horizons lineup of the Venice Film Festival.

The Festival Favorites program also includes two films from Africa that played at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Legend...

Burgeoning Nigerian filmmaking force The Agbajowo Collective put an urgent spin on the brutality of forced evictions with their debut feature, “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” screening in Toronto as part of its Centrepiece program touting “compelling stories, global perspectives.”

Written and directed by the diverse seven-member team of budding and established talents, the narrative follows single mother Jawu (Temi Ami-Williams) as she goes head-to-head with the hired guns doling out a brute force-fate to her waterside village, the story based on the 2017 destruction of informal settlements in the fishing community of Otodo Gbame.

Watch the exclusive trailer below.

In the first-look, the village is introduced through a sweeping aerial shot, framing its sutured structures nestled among waterways, several with bright teal and clay-colored tin roofs that shine effortlessly through thick gray skies. An announcement relaying the state’s plan to demolish the village plays in lock-step...

Cologne and Nairobi-based sales agent Rushlake Media has acquired world sales rights to “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” the feature debut of the Nigerian filmmaking group the Agbajowo Collective which will have its world premiere in the Centerpiece section of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

Based on real-life events that took place in 2016 and 2017 during violent, forced evictions from Lagos’ Otodo Gbame fishing community, the film tells the story of Jawu, a young mother from a waterfront slum who stumbles upon a horde of corrupt blood money marked for a real-estate development that threatens her home. Overcoming isolation and temptation, she must act as a unifying force in a community that stands to lose everything.

Backed by the Durban FilmMart, the Sundance Institute and the Berlinale World Cinema Fund, the film is a collaboration between emerging filmmakers from informal settlements across Lagos working alongside established film professionals.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has unveiled the 43 features selection for the Centrepiece programme including world premieres for Algerian director Merzak Allouache’s feuding matriarchs comedy Front Row and Laura Piani’s romantic comedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.

Taking their place in the global cinema showcase alongside the latest work from 41 countries are features that have already impressed at festivals, such as Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes award winner The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, and Steven Soderbergh’s Sundance selection Presence.

The 18 world premieres include Iranian filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi’s human rights drama Seven Days written by Rasoulof,...