The Nigerian film industry is considered to be the second largest in the world, surpassed only by Hollywood. In the rest of Africa, other regional cinemas flourish. And alongside these, as increasingly everywhere in the world, independent filmmaking thrives -- challenging, innovating, exploring, charting new paths through local and global issues. This is especially true in cinema of the imagination: updating myths to interpret the present, turning a scientific eye on changes to land and people, and envisioning life in decades or centuries to come. This issue is a panorama, a broad range of perspectives looking out from Africa or back from the diaspora, a multifaceted portrait across place and time. The future belongs equally to every continent.