FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 6th July, 2026
International festival connecting audiences in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Africa will launch in October 2026
TORONTO/LONDON/PORT OF SPAIN, — Internationally acclaimed filmmaker and CaribbeanTales Media Group founder Frances-Anne Solomon has announced the launch of the Windrush International Caribbean Film Festival (WICFF) in October 2026.
Film screenings and community conversations will be held at venues in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Caribbean, alongside a virtual programme connecting audiences around the world.
Produced by CaribbeanTales Media Group, in partnership with Livesey Exchange (LEX2) in the UK, Kaiso Blues Café in Trinidad and Tobago, and a growing network of international partners, WICFF builds on the momentum of the UK-based Windrush Caribbean Film Festival (WCFF) while expanding its vision across the Global South and its diasporas.
Windrush is not simply a story of arrival. It is a story of courage, imagination, survival and transformation.
“For me, Windrush has never been only a British story,” said Frances-Anne Solomon, founding director of WCFF and CEO of CaribbeanTales Media Group.
“It is part of a much larger global moment. Across Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the Americas, colonised peoples rose up to challenge the political, cultural and spiritual systems that had sought to define and contain them. Independence movements, anti-colonial struggles and the US Civil Rights Movement all grew out of that demand for freedom, dignity, human rights and sovereignty.”
Solomon’s original vision grew out of the international tour of her award-winning film, HERO: Inspired by the Extraordinary Life and Times of Mr. Ulric Cross. The film travelled internationally, including more than 50 sold-out screenings across the United Kingdom.
“As I travelled with HERO, I began to understand that audiences were not simply responding to one extraordinary Caribbean man,” Solomon said. “They were recognising their own histories. People saw their parents, their grandparents, their communities and the unfinished struggles that continue to shape their lives.
“I realised there was a much larger conversation waiting to happen.”
The experience inspired Solomon to establish the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival in the UK with local community partners. WICFF now takes that original vision further, connecting stories and communities across the Caribbean, Africa, the Americas and beyond.
“The diaspora is real, interconnected and global,” Solomon said. “Across the Global South and its diasporas, we all carry personal stories connected by the struggle for freedom, dignity and belonging. Many of those stories have never been told, while geography and the way colonial history has been written have too often separated us from one another.”
“That is why I created the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival, and it is why we are now expanding that vision into an international festival.”
A Clash Between Imperialism and Human Dignity
For Solomon, the historic period represented by Windrush was marked by profound local xenophobia and racial tension in local communities , but also by explosive resistance to the old imperial order.
“Right now, we are living through another terrifying moment in which migrants, racialised communities and the nations of the Global South are being displaced, blamed and dehumanised,” she said. “The date may change, but the impulse to crush the human spirit remains painfully familiar.”
“WICFF is our response. We want to hear this history through the intimate voices of filmmakers and through the lives of ordinary people who continue to cross oceans, build communities, challenge injustice, love, survive and transform the societies around them.”
Building a Future Through Community Regeneration
For Nicholas Okwulu, founder of the Southwark-based PemPeople — People Empowering People, the festival connects directly to his work in community-led regeneration.
Okwulu built Livesey Exchange, a 5,800-square-foot, two-storey community centre in Southwark, from the ground up as a place where local people can gather, create, learn and help shape the future of their neighbourhood.
“In Southwark, I see the living legacy of migration all around me,” Okwulu said. “It is in the businesses we build, the music we create, the food and the ways people look after one another when the systems around them do not.”
“For me, regeneration is not simply about buildings or bringing investment into an area. It is about recognising the people who are already here—their history, their knowledge, their creativity and their right to shape what comes next.”
“Livesey Exchange is more than a building. It is a place rooted in, created with and belonging to the community.”
“Our elders carry big stories but were never asked to tell them,” Okwulu continued “Their children and grandchildren know fragments, but not the full journey. Film can bring those generations into conversation. It can help younger people understand where they came from, what it cost their families to create a life here, and how that history can become the foundation for building a new future.”
Solomon added “Our festival aims to live at the precise intersection of lived community spaces and global conversations—where intimate, personal stories resonate across borders, and create wide impact.”
The Caribbean Perspective: The View from Home
For Trinidad-based film programmer Mandisa Pantin, Windrush is inseparable from the experiences of Caribbean people who remained in the region while relatives, friends and neighbours left to build lives overseas.
“Living in Trinidad, I do not experience Windrush as a distant British story,” Pantin said. “It is connected to the people who studied or worked in the UK then returned, and to those who stayed behind and built lives in the newly independent Caribbean nations. It is present in the families that became stretched across continents, in the barrels and letters sent home, in the absences at the family table, and in the new ideas and expectations that came back.”
“Our stories of migration are also stories of families that stayed connected across oceans. WICFF gives us an opportunity to bring those different sides of the experience together, and to understand Windrush as part of a much larger global movement for self-determination.”
“All of us have close relatives in the Caribbean, America, England and beyond,” Solomon added. “We are connected virutally and move constantly between those physical places. This festival is about placing our personal stories beside one another, in public.”
“When we do that, a much bigger picture emerges. Our histories are not isolated. Our local stories have always spoken to one another across borders.”
“Most importantly, we see clearly that the people who lived these histories were not simply victims of empire. They were thinkers, builders, artists, rebels, parents, workers and dreamers. They changed the world.”
“WICFF will present films that reveal history through lived experience: stories of migration and settlement, rebellion and resistance, family and memory, cultural survival, political awakening and spiritual freedom,” Okwulu said.
WICFF will offer film screenings, filmmaker conversations, community gatherings, panel discussions and educational activities, alongside opportunities for audiences in different countries to engage directly with one another.
The virtual programme will extend the festival beyond its physical venues, creating an international space where Caribbean, African and diasporic audiences can watch films, share experiences and discover the connections between their histories.
About CaribbeanTales Media Group
CaribbeanTales Media Group is a Black- and female-led international media organisation dedicated to the creation, development, production, exhibition and distribution of diasporic screen content from Black and Global South filmmakers.
Through its festivals, training programmes, productions, distribution platforms and international partnerships, CaribbeanTales builds sustainable pathways for filmmakers and brings underrepresented stories to audiences around the world.
About Livesey Exchange (LEX2) & Pempeople
Livesey Exchange (LEX) is a community-led creative and cultural hub in Southwark, founded by community enabler Nicholas Okwulu.
Located on the Old Kent Road, the 5,800-square-foot, two-storey, purpose-built centre includes affordable workspaces, event and screening spaces, workshops, a café and kitchen, and facilities for training, cultural activity and community enterprise.
About Kaiso Blues Cafe
Kaiso Blues Cafe (otherwise known as Kafe Blue) is a live entertainment venue and cultural lounge located on Wrightson Road in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Known as “The Home of Live Entertainment & Creative Expression,” it serves as an intimate hub for local art, poetry, and live music, blending traditional Caribbean rhythms with contemporary styles.
