The 6th edition of the Maputo Fast Forward /MFF festival had the theme Cosmopolitics & Afrotopias:

The end of the last century was dominated by the grim and depressing sentiment that the “future was canceled”. Authors like Franco Berardi (among many others) wrote extensively about this underlining how the utopian visions and projects of the beginning of that century gave place, in the aftermath of the 2nd World War, to increasingly dystopian scenarios, fueled by the prospects of a “mutual assured destruction” enabled by the massive nuclear arsenals that were developed during the Cold War period.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the “great narratives” that had prevailed until then – characterized by Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history” – consolidated the notion that there was no real alternative to “market societies” and its values. In the “New World Order” of the last decade of the 20th century there was no place or need for the “future”. The “future” had become the “present”. (…full text available here)

With this in mind, the 2021 edition of the Maputo Fast Forward Festival (MFF) intends to be a space for reflection contributing to the “global conversation” about the future of the planet and the various beings and entities that inhabit it, by stimulating in particular the “production of alternative imaginaries” that feed the formulation of a “mobilising utopia” for the 21st century.