Screening of the film Clarissa, directed by Arie and Chuko Esiri, within the Film Africa 2026 festival at Watershed.
Clarissa is screening at Watershed on Thursday 19 November, as part of Film Africa 2026. It's a modern-day, Lagos-set adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, directed by Arie and Chuko Esiri. The story follows Clarissa, a society woman preparing to host a party at her home in Nigeria, who unexpectedly runs into friends she was once intimate with in her youth. Over the course of a single night, their shared past brings to the surface memories of intricate relationships, passionate love, hidden desires and lost aspirations.
It's a heavy-hitting cast: Sophie Okonedo leads, with Toheeb Jimoh, Ayo Edebiri, David Oyelowo, Fortune Nwafor and India Amarteifio. The film runs 125 minutes, in English and Pidgin English with subtitles, and carries an 18 rating. It premiered earlier this year at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section, so this is one of its first UK screenings.
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The screening is part of Film Africa 2026, the Royal African Society's annual celebration of African cinema, now in its 13th edition. This year's theme is '125 Years of Storytelling and Movie Making in Africa', marking the Society's own 125th anniversary. It's billed as the UK's largest annual festival of African cinema, running from 23 October to 1 November at BFI Southbank and partner venues across the country, with Watershed in Bristol being one of them.
