Nigeria Goes Global; AFRIFF Plots Market; Doha Launches New Festival
Africa had a notably bigger presence at this year’s Cannes film festival and market, in particular Nigeria, which had My Father’s Shadow in Un Certain Regard, while the Nigerian government was talking up plans to invest in the country’s creative economy. In addition, the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) announced plans to launch a market at this year’s edition, one of a series of new film markets and festivals based in the Global South announced during Cannes.
Various organisations from the Arab world also held a busy schedule of panels, talks and networking events at the festival, with activities spearheaded by the Arab Cinema Center, Doha Film Institute (DFI) and Media City Qatar, Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival and Saudi’s Red Sea International Film Festival. DFI also announced plans to launch a fully fledged film festival this November. You can find further details of all these developments below along with a reminder that, unlike the US & UK trades, Streamlined is an independent publication that is funded by readers, not by film commissions, so strives to be objective rather than regurgitating publicity material.
This is Streamlined’s last free report before taking a six-week break over the summer, during which I’m overseeing some technical upgrades to the platform which should hugely improve the reader experience. The Streamlined Guide to Asia Co-production Funds will be published later this month.
Nigerian Government Steps In To Support Screen Industries
Nigeria’s Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy was active in Cannes, talking up plans to invest $300m into the country’s screen industries and introducing recently launched film promotion agency, Screen Nigeria, which hosted the first ever Nigeria Pavilion in the International Village.
The country had a lot to celebrate at the festival this year with Akinola Davies Jr’s debut feature My Father’s Shadow as the first Nigerian film in Cannes official selection. Nigeria’s culture minister Hannatu Musawa says the country now plans to build out the soft power of its screen industries, emulating its globally successful Afrobeats industry, which has seen artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid and Tems become international stars.
Nigeria is of course already home to the prolific Nollywood film industry but faces a lot of infrastructure problems, particularly when it comes to distribution and monetisation. Like several other content industries around the world, Nigeria had a flood of investment from the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney during the height of the streamer wars, but from early 2024, disillusioned by low ARPU and infrastructure problems, they started to pull out. Netflix is still active but local producers say the streamer has reduced investment over the past year.
Meanwhile, the country remains massively under-screened with just over 300 screens for a population of around 240 million – the biggest population by far in Africa. In the past, Nigerian producers have mostly relied on digital revenue, often targeting the higher spending diaspora population in the UK and North America, but are now exploring other ways to recoup.
Nigeria’s government has not historically been involved in supporting the screen industries, but now perhaps seeing the potential for jobs creation, is starting to step in. During Cannes, Musawa explained that her ministry had commissioned Boston Consulting Group to conduct a study in which they looked at how South Korea has developed its creative industries. She also said that the government has secured investment of $300m in partnership with banks, including Afreximbank, to fund initiatives that could add $100m to Nigeria’s GDP by 2030.
These initiatives include building Abuja Creative City in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, part of the Destination 2030 Nigeria blueprint, designed to boost tourism and create jobs. She added that approval is pending from the finance ministry for an incentives scheme, designed to attract international production, and that co-production treaties with countries including South Africa, France, India and Brazil are also in the works.
Screen Nigeria hosted a panel during the Cannes market to discuss these initiatives and other moves to develop Nigeria’s production ecosystem, moderated by Baba Agba, special adviser to Nigeria’s President on the creative industries.
Among the speakers, entertainment lawyer Isioma Idigbe said work needs to be done in strengthening the business and legal side of Nollywood – including gathering data on production budgets and revenue streams, which would help in negotiations with streamers; training production accountants; improving laws and training schemes around issues like intellectual property and chain of title, and drafting co-production treaties.
“Nollywood has always pretty much been private equity-funded and done very well in terms of growing on its own, but that has always limited scalability to a large extent,” said Idigbe, a partner at Lagos-based Punuka Attorneys & Solicitors. “What we're seeing now, and hopefully when all these policies and funds are properly implemented, is the creation of an enabling environment for the sector that’s supported by the right policies to allow the sector to scale.”
Nigerian producer and director Steve Gukas said the current lack of formality is “both a strength and a weakness” as it’s helped the freewheeling Nollywood industry move at speed, but added there needs to be better distribution in place, both for export and internally. He used the example of the Indian film industry, which suffered less from a reduction in streamer investment, because it also has cinemas. “What we lack in Nigeria is a strong cinema ecosystem, which is usually the first layer of the chain of monetisation through which you can recoup.”
Producer Uche Okocha, whose psychological thriller The Weekend played at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, agreed that business knowledge is essential and said his studio, Trino Motion Pictures, has recently launched a programme to train 12 filmmakers in international sales and distribution: “A lot of our producers make films, but don’t really understand how to sell them. We need more workshops and programmes that focus on the business side for distributors and sales agents.”
It all sounds like Nigeria could be moving in the right direction (Streamlined is a firm believer in public-private partnerships to develop the creative industries) but at the same time, the experience of other countries has shown that there are always those less scrupulous players who are happy to take advantage of a large amount of money being invested into film and TV.
Hopefully, Nigeria can learn from the mistakes of others when it comes to issues such as negotiating with the streamers, project investment, introducing production incentives and entering into and utilising co-production treaties – and establish a system that truly empowers Nigerian producers and filmmakers, rather than the opportunists. At the risk of sounding cynical, we all know there is no shortage of the latter in the international film business.
Africa International Film Festival To Launch Market
Also speaking on the Cannes market panel, Chioma Ude, CEO of Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF), said that the 15-year-old festival is launching an industry platform for the first time this year in partnership with Nigeria’s Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy.
Dennis Ruh, former head of the European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin, has been tapped as a consultant for the event, the AFRIFF Film and Content Market (AFCM, not to be confused with Busan’s ACFM), which will take place during this year’s AFRIFF in November, with exact dates yet to be confirmed. It will include exhibitions and showcases of African and international content, project pitch sessions, panel discussions and networking events.
“We needed a market so we can understand regional sales – otherwise when the platforms come back to Africa we would be at a disadvantage,” said Ude on the Cannes panel. “We need to understand a film’s positioning in the market, whatever stage of production it is at, so that if we’re bargaining with a distributor, we have a better idea of its value.”
Africa’s festival circuit also includes two events in South Africa – Joburg Film Festival, which usually takes place in March, and the upcoming Durban International Film Festival (July 17-27), which also has a project market (see line-up here). Other film events on the continent include FESPACO in Burkina Faso in late February/early March and the Marrakesh, Carthage, Cairo and El Gouna film festivals in North Africa.
AFRIFF and nearly all the Arab festivals in the region – including the new Doha Film Festival (see below) – are taking place in that busy October-December window, which also includes most of the Asian film festivals (fortunately, the new Bangkok International Film Festival is talking about a January slot). But while it’s taking place during a busy time of year, AFCM could potentially serve as a much-needed entry point into Africa’s most prolific film industry. Streamlined will attempt to keep you informed.
Qatar Unveils Details Of New Doha Film Festival
The small but influential Arabian Gulf nation of Qatar was also making a noise in Cannes through its Media City Qatar hub and the Doha Film Institute (DFI). Hassan Al-Thawadi, the Qatari lawyer who helped deliver the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, has now turned his attention to the country’s film industry, which includes building out the Doha-based Katara Studios and the DFI’s activities. After producing the Qatar World Cup opening and closing ceremonies, Katara Studios is now developing a slate of Qatari movies including Sakhr, a biopic of Kuwaiti tech pioneer Mohamed Al Sharekh, and AJ Al-Thani’s fantasy feature Sari & Amira.
In addition, the DFI announced plans to expand Qatar’s existing youth and family-focused Ajyal Film Festival into a fully fledged international film festival, scheduled for November 20-28. The Doha Film Festival will hand out awards worth more than $300,000 across four competition strands – International Features, International Short Films, the Ajyal Film Competition (judged by the festival’s youth jury) and Made In Qatar for Qatari-based filmmakers. DFI CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi will serve as the festival director.
The 15-year-old DFI also organises Qumra, a talent incubator and masterclass event taking place in Qatar in April, and provides development, production and post-production grants (see latest funding round here). The organisation provided support for eight films screening at this year’s Cannes, including Chie Hayakawa’s competition title Renoir; Un Certain Regard titles Aisha Can’t Fly Away, Promised Sky and Once Upon A Time In Gaza; Critics Week titles Sleepless City and L’Mina; ACID title Life After Siham; and The President’s Cake, which won the Camera d’Or and the audience award in Directors Fortnight.
Other African Events & Communique Coverage
In addition to the Cannes market panel discussions, two programmes focused on the African continent took place during Cannes: AfroCannes and the Nigerian International Film Summit (NIFS). AfroCannes, organised by the Paris-based non-profit Yanibes Foundation, which also organises AfroBerlin, held a four-day series of panels, screenings and networking events focusing on content creation both in Africa and across the African diaspora. NIFS held a two-day event with speakers from companies including Nile Media Entertainment Group, Trino Motion Pictures, Filmhouse Group and FilmOne Entertainment. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend either event due to clashing schedules. Hopefully I’ll be better organised next year.
As all this activity suggests, it’s an interesting time for Africa’s content industries. Recently, South Africa’s Competition Commission granted “conditional approval” for France’s Canal+ to acquire South Africa-based Multichoice, which operates broadcast and streaming services across the African continent, mostly in English-speaking markets, while Canal+ is already strong in French-speaking markets.
If you’re interested in reading more about these developments, as well as Africa’s burgeoning tech industries, Communique, founded by Lagos-based journalist David Adeleke, is a solid resource. I recently joined Communique’s advisory board in a voluntary capacity as the company moves towards being a pan-African media outlet covering the tech and entertainment industries in a sorely underserved space.
IN THE TRADES:
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CURATED:
Shanghai Film Fest Unveils Golden Goblet Lineup With Record Submissions
Africa International Film Festival launches Film and Content Market in Cannes
Doha Film Institute Unveils Venues & Awards Worth $300,000 For New Fall Festival
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Cloud’ Sets U.S. Release Date
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