The 33rd African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) opens with a bold lineup of contemporary African and Afro-diasporic films exploring resilience, artistic freedom, and identity. From riveting historical epics to politically charged dramas, this year’s programme reflects the complexity and creativity of African storytelling across generations and geographies.
For over three decades, ADIFF’s co-founders and curators, Diarah and Reinaldo Ndaw-Spech, have quietly staged a revolution in how films by Pan-African filmmakers are exhibited and distributed. Through their long-standing collaborations with Teachers College, Columbia University–where Reinaldo taught before retiring–and with Cinema Village and other venues around New York City, they have created an indispensable home for our stories.
This year, Malawi joins the conversation in a new way. For the first time, a home-grown Malawian independent feature documentary, a co-production with the UK, will screen in the United States: The Banjo Boys.
A “little engine that could” documentary
Keep up with the latest headlines on WhatsApp | LinkedIn
This is my first documentary feature as an executive producer. I didn’t anticipate stepping into this role in quite this way. In fact, everything I am experiencing with this film, I never learned at film school. We were perhaps over-educated when, in reality, the documentary process can be deeply organic if you allow it to be. All the industry talk about “budget lines” and “above the line/below the line” can sometimes feel like an elaborate mechanism to give as many people jobs as possible–often in ways that are not strictly necessary for this kind of filmmaking.
Documentaries are more liberating than fiction features, where everything has to be constructed and controlled. The Banjo Boys is the “little engine that could”: powered by serendipity, perseverance, and a growing circle of people who kept jumping on board, whispering “I think I can, I think I can” under their breath.
Everyone involved in this film–on screen and behind the camera–seems to have been caught in its web of positivity. Most of us have faced and overcome great obstacles in other chapters of our lives, but the ease with which we found ourselves woven into this team says something about our shared mindset: a collective determination to manifest the spirit of the movie by simply doing the right thing.
What began as a road movie between two brothers–Neil and Johan Nayar–has slowly become a kind of cult favourite, with audiences asking for encore screenings. In October 2025, the London Breeze Film Festival at Riverside Studios awarded it their Audience Award and has committed to supporting the film’s journey into next year.
Serendipity, siblings, and a band called “Blessing”
Neil Nayar is the manager of Madalitso Band; Johan is his older brother, a filmmaker who once took a short film course and then, twenty-odd years later, simply decided to pick up a camera and follow them on tour. Tech-marketing executive-turned-producer Tim Delhaes came on board after literally bumping into Neil while on a mountain in Malawi with his family one evening.
There are many others: relatives, friends, and collaborators like Malawian writer and Chichewa translator Isaac Mafuel; advisor and rights manager David Zannoni; art directors and designers Yuri Dekovic and Alberto Contreras; sound designer Guy Dowsett; colourist Neill Jones; and our circle of executive producers: Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe, Sates Mathura, Gary Phillips, Mark Dennis, and myself. I am simply the latest in a line of people who have joined this train–and surely not the last.
My job, for now, is to help find the “bigger fish” who can raise more money and visibility for the film. Collectively, we’re dreaming up the next chapter: The Madalitso Experience–a hybrid touring event pairing the film, a live set by Madalitso Band, and Britain’s Got Talent finalist Daliso Chaponda as MC and comedian.
Before the North American premiere at ADIFF on December 4, 2025, Johan and I took a moment to breathe and talk about how this journey began.
Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe: Good to see you. How are you feeling?
Johan Nayar: I’m feeling good.
When did you even think about making a movie about Madelitso? What was your response when you first heard about Madalitso Band Music?
So my first response, my ear was not really used to it. The first time I went to see them in Lyon was quite interesting. I’d never seen anything like it. The second time I saw them was when I really managed to understand what it was all about because it was a very lively audience. And the sound was very different because it was a tiny venue the first time. The second time was actually at WOMAD. So that was just an amazing sound, and the crowd was going crazy.
And that’s when I was like, Ah, yeah, now it really makes sense. It fits in so perfectly as a party music festival vibe type of thing.
Right. And then at that point, why were you convinced that there should be a movie made about them?
Well, actually, the second time it was with my camera at WOMAD. So the second time, I didn’t know if there was a feature film there, but I definitely felt like there was a story. And I probed Neil, my brother, who’s the manager of the band. I probed him a few times about the story of the band. And yeah, he just sounded really interested. And it was just quite amazing what the work they were doing together was like. And I just thought, I’ll just take my camera and I’ll just do a bit of filming. And yeah, that was it.
Great. How did you even start filmmaking?
I think I made my first film at school. It was a little school project, and it was a lot of fun. And I just remembered the slightly more creative people did all the work on the shooting. And then we just set it aside for the other people to edit. It didn’t turn out so great, but it was a really steep learning curve. And then I just decided I wanted to go to film school. After spending some time travelling in India, taking photographs, and really enjoying photography and the adventure of being in India for the first time, I put two and two together. And I was like, “I’m going to go to film school.” I was just 21, and that’s when I really started to take it seriously.
Where did you go to film school?
New York Film Academy, but they had a London edition so we didn’t have to go all the way to New York for it. It was like a six-week intensive course. And it gave me a really good grounding in the essentials of filmmaking. My tutor is a guy called Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of Quest Nutrition, CEO of Impact Theory, a billionaire entrepreneur, sort of influencer type guy? He was actually my tutor at film school. And they just taught us to get out there and start filming, start making stuff. So after film school, my friends and I made some films together.
I went to India to film a documentary that’s currently still sitting in my files. It’s like a very young me going out with a camera and just making a solo documentary. It’s possibly a work to be finished somewhere down the line.
How long ago was all of this?
How long? I was 21. So now you’re going to know how old I am. That was back in 2001.
Do you feel like The Banjo Boys came at the right time?
This film industry is obviously a really difficult nut to crack, and at my first attempt, I didn’t think I had enough skills to pull it off, enough business skills, if you like. So I had a 10-year hiatus. I did very different things. I did a master’s in evolutionary psychology. I travelled around South America. And then just started getting back into filmmaking in 2016. I made a comedy short where I play a crazy guru. That’s my first and last time acting. I’m one of his clients, his client. And well, it started to work, you could say. Anyway, no spoilers there, but it’s called The Trouble with Gurus. And that was my first film.
Has it been released?
It’s just on YouTube.
There is a movie like that on Netflix of a guy who’s like a fake guru who goes around Arizona and all these holy places acting like he’s real.
And there’s also Wild Wild Country (Netflix), which is about Osho, which isn’t amazing. It’s a documentary, and there are a few sorts of things in that realm for sure.
Interesting. So you stumbled across Madelitso Band because of your brother.
Yeah, entirely. I was actually doing my day job back in 2019. And I had a week of holiday, and it coincided with their week touring in the U.K.. I took a week off and just took my DSL out and went out filming them. And that does constitute a small part of the film. I just think it seems like the whole of Madalitso’s experience is always serendipitous for everybody, like all the time. You know, nothing is scheduled. Nobody planned any of this. I definitely didn’t plan to be part of this project at all. It just sort of came up, you know. It was Madalitso who brought us in. Maybe it’s their name. Maybe because of their name, the name is called Madalitso, which means blessing, which means gift in Chichewa. I don’t know, but it’s just something quite special about them. Something very special. I think by the time I experienced WOMAD, I was hooked on the music, and my brother is the same. And he’s seen them many more times than I, but every show is just so much fun. And Yobu is just so captivating on the vocals.
Yes, the energy Madalitso Band brings is amazing.
A lot of people are doing loop pedals these days, but the energy they bring from a two-man band is just unbelievable.
Yes, it really is. The vibration is very high. I love the whole opening sequence of the film with a drone shot.
That footage was contributed to us by Cosmo Jazz. So they’re the Jazz festival and a lot of music documentaries are about fully established bands, whereas we felt that if we brought the audience in a little bit too early into the story, we wouldn’t have enough of a hook to captivate the audience. So we wanted the strongest hook we could get. And then we’re going to bring you into the backstory a little bit and almost go to the beginning, which is, you know, it’s a little bit bleak. It’s the famine in Malawi. It’s leaving villages to make a new life for yourself and the struggle, from Act 1 in the film. Yeah, it’s all bare bones, actually. Everybody’s bare.
Everybody’s vulnerable in this film, and that’s what I love about the film is the vulnerability that you allow to come through.
That is life, nothing can be planned, but at least you just have to go for it.
Whatever situation you’re presented with, like, even Neil, your brother, the unexpected manager, as the subplot. Neil’s story is quite fascinating. I found myself laughing now and then, like, “Oh, my gosh,” holding my head.
Yeah, he’s quite an eccentric person as well, Neil.
Oh, totally. He’s hilarious. Just watching him on the dance floor makes my head hurt.
He actually won that competition we put in the film; he actually won the date with the blonde girl.
Oh, my gosh, she didn’t really care.
She was just like, I want to be on TV, you know.
But the way that you handled that responsibility between the manager, your brother and the band, because it’s a very delicate thing. You talked about some serious, underlying issues there, and the responsibility of having to look after a band from another country, another worldview. And so I think that’s kind of what’s very interesting about their relationship as time goes on. Is that the audience is presented with these situations, a relationship that does go wrong in certain places…. I’m not going to be a spoiler. No more details about the story. But I just found that vulnerability touching, and that is why I think I love this film so much, and I was happy to be asked to be the executive producer.
Right.
Did you ever believe that you’d even get an award?
I think probably, at some point, when we were shaping it up, I started to think, “Oh, this is really, really good.” The rough cut was quite far from that, but certainly as we got into the polishing and refining, it and getting the remainder of the arc. At some point, we had collected enough footage to just really say, “Right, you know, we just need a first cut. We need a rough cut just to give us the feeling of having a film complete.” So it was a 90-minute cut, and it had a lot of excess fat in it. We knew we had to just trim it down, get it quite tight. The original aim was 71 minutes, but we did feel that there was just enough story in there to leave it at 76.
I’ve sort of joined the process as you did, like an actor stumbling into a scene, which is quite interesting to see how it goes. What was the big takeaway from London Breeze Film Festival? What did you feel like?
I’m actually here, I’m at a festival! We got an award!
What was going through your head?
I mean, the first thing that was going through my head was that I was just praying for the DCP (Digital Cinema Package, the worldwide industry standard format for digital movie exhibition in cinemas) to be properly tested because I haven’t been fully, properly tested. And that was, you know, everyone said it was tested now, but my biggest worry was a technical issue. So I still had that in the back of my head, but it played through perfectly and beautifully, and the sound was just to see it for the first time. Because I literally watched it for a few weeks, weeks before, on my own computer, where it jumped every few frames because I was trying to play a DCP on my Mac. It was a very unpleasant experience. And then, to just see it in its full glory on the cinema screen, where all the work we’ve been doing with Guy Dowsett on the sound. All the work with the colourist, who is Neill Jones, all of that kind of work. Everything just looked amazing. The movie theatre itself was just an absolute delight.
The Riverside studio is just an absolute delight, and you know, London Breeze put it together so well. So the whole event just felt like the real thing, even though the story has so many beginnings, it was another major beginning this time for the journey of the film itself.
It just felt amazing. I could tell just from the room that the audience was into it, and just not just friends and family who, you know, could easily be sort of just being polite or something. But there was a genuine feeling of excitement, and all of the volunteers were just very excited about it. That’s when you know something is happening, you know.
Absolutely. And I think the magic is the fact that it’s so unique. There’s nothing out there like these guys; there’s nobody. Except, of course, if you go to Lilongwe, maybe Lusaka, Chipata, and this corner of the world between Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe – you hear this genre of music, but anywhere out of this region, it doesn’t even exist. And I think you did a good job at allowing the two real characters playing themselves, Yobu and Yosef, and, of course, your brother Neil, who’s the main character, to exist on celluloid. I mean, these are essentially actors at the end of the day.
In a way, yeah. Yeah.
They were just allowed to be themselves. You didn’t over-direct them at all. Cinema verite. You just followed them in real time. So that was really well done. Because it can be so contrived, this whole “musicians-on-tour documentary kind of genre.” This is like the anti-rockumentary genre, what you did. It’s because there’s no glamour, you know, there’s no pretentiousness, no badly behaved band members wearing feathered boas and flares. You know what I’m saying?
Yeah.
I think the glamour comes from the excitement of the scenery and the beautiful places they go to, straight from the village in Malawi. So I don’t know if I call it glamour as much as adventure, maybe, but that’s where it is. Yeah, the natural element came, and it didn’t focus on the dysfunction of the human condition necessarily. It just focused on joy, you know, and that’s what I think, that’s the big takeaway, I think that’s why I’m such a big fan of the movie, people should be, because I think people should be more immersed in joy and have the opportunity to spend more time in that energy. I think Yobu and, and Yosefi are so chill.
Yeah, we didn’t quite capture it in the documentary, but one of the things that amazes me about them is that they could literally play in the square in a city in France. The hotel is just on one side of the square, but after the show, they just go back up to their room, watch Kung Fu Panda for the 150th time, and just have a chill evening. Neil’s on the other side. He would just be able to go out again to sort of keep the vibe going a bit more. And so, yeah, he is more probably the classic sort of rock and roller.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Yeah, for sure.
They’re just super chill.
They are completely unspoiled. If I can use that word without being patronising in the sense that they haven’t been corrupted by the business, and that’s really lovely. So now, you’re just about to have your North American premiere at the Africa Diaspora Film Festival in New York, which is, by the way, another interesting event. It’s going to be very interesting, and I’m going to look forward to your comments on it because it’s really a film festival for professional filmmakers of colour. That’s really who it’s for, you know. So you get a chance to be amongst your peers and watch their films too. I don’t know whether you’ve seen their program, but they literally curate up to 113 films a year.
Yes, absolutely. So let me see what my film is like amongst all of these other movies that were produced in the last 24 months. Because that’s it. It’s a repertoire.
Yes. You get to see what people have been thinking for the last 24 months. Where are their heads at? Where’s the world going? That’s going to be lovely. So what would you say you want to accomplish with the North American premier.
I mean, it’s our international premiere. So they say that only after your world premiere and your international premiere, will you feel something, as those are your two biggest ones. So I would love to just have a lot of people watch the film at the event itself. And obviously, if the response was the same as we had in London, then that would just be incredible. And to get a bit more of the word out about the film to a greater audience.
Madalitso just got back from New York after being invited to play their first gala for over 800 people at the Glasshouse for Buildon, a nonprofit whose founder, president, and CEO is Jim Ziolkowski. It’s an international nonprofit organisation that has built 2,999 schools around the world. Their first school was in Malawi, and they wanted to celebrate the building of their 3000th school, which was built in Kasungu, Malawi, with Madalitso Band to mark the occasion. Denis Nayden (and his wife Britta Nayden) are significant philanthropists and major donors to the organisation. Denis Nayden serves on the Global Board of buildOn. The Naydens have contributed to the construction of over 2,000 schools around the world.
Oh, yeah. Well, if the Buildon teams enjoyed the live performance, we know they will really love the film. You get so much more of the backstory of how they got to where they are, a little bit about how they made their instruments, about how this whole thing works with the manager and the two of them, who they really need to work as a core team of three. And you’ll get to see some beautiful scenery, and you’ll also get to see a little bit of the lyrics because all the lyrics, or most of the lyrics, have been subtitled. So, you’ll get to have a better understanding of what they’re singing about as well.
You know, it’s the skanky leg kind of response to the music that means so much in the end. Your body just starts to move, you know? You don’t even care. I’m really looking forward to journeying with you on this movie.
I’m looking forward to that as well.
We need joy.
That’s right.
It’s a vibe.
Yeah. And I think the film reflects that as well.
Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, Johan. You’re the best. And good luck to us for everything.
Thank you.