The Tree of Authenticity
New York African Film Festival 2025
May 7 - 13, 2025
In the heart of the Congo rainforest, the remains of a research center dedicated to tropical agriculture reveals the burden of the colonial past and its inextricable links to contemporary climate change. Preceded by Leonardo Gámez Gil’s The Planet of Water and Laura Bermúdez’s La Serpiente de Shelmeca.
Nestled in Africa’s largest rainforest lies one of the many gravesites of the West’s efforts to control nations and nature—one of the world’s largest tropical agricultural research centers. Located on the banks of the Congo River, the Yangambi INERA Research Station was a booming scientific center in its heyday, but today, it is an amalgam of jungle and ruin. Sammy Baloji’s gripping documentary The Tree of Authenticity recounts the stigma of ecological destruction that began at the time of colonization through the voices of two emblematic scientists who worked at Yangambi between 1910 and 1950, Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert. Their stories embody the legacies of colonial modernity and trace the origins of today’s environmental injustice.
Preceded by
The Planet of Water
Leonardo Gámez Gil, 2024, Mexico, 3m
Spanish with English subtitles
In the near future, humanity—obsessed with saving water while destroying its own planet—faces a devastating environmental crisis. Humans begin to explore space in search of water, and in their absence, the Earth regenerates itself.
La Serpiente de Shelmeca
Laura Bermúdez, 2023, Honduras, 3m
Miskitu/Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
The second most important rainforest in the Americas hides an archaeological secret of an ancient indigenous population, known today as Ciudad Blanca. Wildres Wood, the first biologist from the Miskitu ethnic group, embarks on a journey to the heart of the jungle to protect Honduras’ most important treasure for the world.
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