"Original landlords of the planet." Chike Nwoffiah doesn't just say it — he means it. The founder and festival director of the Silicon Valley African Film Festival (SVAFF) has spent the last 16 years pulling off what sounds, on paper, like a fever dream: an African film festival thriving in the tech capital of the world, where Black residents make up less than 3% of the population.
Sixteen years later, the "impossible idea" has become one of America's most quietly powerful cultural revolutions — a gathering where African and diasporic filmmakers don't show up begging for space. They own it.