{"id":669586,"date":"2025-05-16T12:09:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T09:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/cannes-showcases-africas-film-future\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T12:09:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T09:09:56","slug":"cannes-showcases-africas-film-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/cannes-showcases-africas-film-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Cannes Showcases Africa\u2019s Film Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tAfrican cinema has arrived in Cannes determined to blaze its own trail amid signs of a slowdown in investment across the continent from the world\u2019s leading streamers.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeading the way is Akinola Davies Jr.\u2019s drama My Father\u2019s Shadow<\/em>, an Un Certain Regard contender that\u2019s being touted as the first Nigerian film ever selected for Cannes\u2019 official lineup. The continent\u2019s vast array of location options, meanwhile, is being showcased thanks to the Cameroon-set police thriller Indomptables<\/em>, from French director Thomas Ngijol, part of this year\u2019s Directors\u2019 Fortnight lineup.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe much-anticipated Nigerian historical fantasy Osamede<\/em> will also have its world premiere at the festival \u2014 screening at the March\u00e9 du Film\u2019s Pavillon Afriques on May 17 \u2014 and its makers believe the message Africa collectively wants to share is that the continent remains open for business.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the pandemic-era streaming boom, when the legacy studios joined Netflix in a race to boost subscriber counts, Africa \u2014 with its young demographics and large populations \u2014 was frequently touted as a promising growth market. But in the post-pandemic reassessment of streaming, when revenue per user became Wall Street\u2019s preferred metric for assessing success in the sector (rather than sub growth at any cost) U.S. studios and platforms began speaking much less frequently about their original content ambitions in Africa.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve already realized that we want to tell authentic African stories and we don\u2019t want to tell them just for local audiences,\u201d says Osamede<\/em>\u2019s Nigeria-based director James Omokwe. \u201cSo Cannes is one of the first places we want to go internationally, for people to see what we\u2019ve done \u2014 to see what\u2019s coming out of Africa and to see our first moves out of, you know, the rubble [of the streaming investment slowdown].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSet against the backdrop of the 1897 British invasion of the Benin Kingdom, Osamede<\/em> follows an orphaned girl who happ<\/a>ens upon supernatural powers, with the filmmakers promising a \u201cgenre-blending epic that mixes myth, magic and resistance.\u201d The stage-to-screen production is being driven by executive producer Lilian Olubi\u2019s Gold Lilies Productions, and it has been picked up for domestic and regional distribution by Nile Entertainment. The move to premiere the film at Cannes is designed to showcase it on a more international stage.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the beginning, we were having conversations about how we\u2019d probably take the film to streamers \u2014 simple,\u201d says Omokwe. \u201cBut now we\u2019ve had to figure out how to do it on our own. It\u2019s now like you\u2019re reinventing the wheel, innovating new ways to distribute the film and make money because as it is, there\u2019s no standard value chain, so we\u2019re all just trying our best to see how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmazon Prime\u2019s decision last year to cease operations in Africa sent tremors across the continent\u2019s content industries. The move cut investment in original content, along with momentum in the sector for mergers and acquisitions. Multiple industry insiders tell THR<\/em> \u2014 asking not to be named to protect relationships and future opportunities \u2014 that they believed Netflix was implementing a slowdown of its investments in the region, too. But the California-based streaming giant is still spending more on African content than its peers.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfrican titles in the works from Netflix include new seasons of the popular series<\/a> Kings of Jo\u2019Burg <\/em>(season three) and Fatal Seduction<\/em> (season two). The company also has an ongoing partnership with the Johannesburg-based production banner Burnt Onion (Seriously Single<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in March \u2014 on the sidelines of the Joburg Film Festival \u2014 Netflix\u2019s vp of content in the Middle East and Africa, Ben Amadasun, remained bullish about the streamer\u2019s prospects in the region.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe have seen firsthand the power and impact of African stories, not just on the continent but across the world,\u201d Amadasun said at the event. \u201cThe global audience is hungry for authentic, bold and fresh African narratives, and Netflix is committed to ensuring those stories reach and resonate with millions of entertainment fans worldwide. Our approach is simple: We want to invest in the best African talent, collaborate with amazing local creators, and continue expanding the frontiers of what\u2019s possible in African storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn paper at least, prospects for the region appear full of promise. Some big names have rallied to the cause, with London-born The Wire<\/em> and Luther<\/em> star Idris Elba last year announcing plans to set up studios across the region, starting in Tanzania and on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar. The actor \u2014 who was born to a Sierra Leonean father and a Ghanaian mother \u2014 cited the K-wave content boom from South Korea as an example of what Africa could achieve, lamenting to CNN on the sidelines of the Stellar Development Foundation\u2019s Meridian conference in London that the majority of African-set content \u201cisn\u2019t even generated from Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe media<\/a>n age in Africa is 19; these young people are optimistic and deserve the chance to tell their own stories,\u201d Elba said. UNESCO has projected that Africa\u2019s film and audiovisual industry could \u201ccreate 20\u202fmillion jobs and add $20\u202fbillion to the continent\u2019s GDP by 2030.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLagos-based media mogul Mo Abudu, founder and CEO of the EbonyLife Group, is well aware of those prospects \u2014 and of the potential for African content and talent to expand its global reach. \u201cI\u2019m very excited about the fact that we need to create our own distribution channels, our own distribution networks,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need to find ways to fund our own productions. I am excited about building that ecosystem around funding, distribution and production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re working on a $50\u202fmillion film fund that African filmmakers can draw from by the end of the year. We\u2019re looking at budgets from between $2\u202fmillion to $8\u202fmillion. I\u2019m excited about the fact that we\u2019re talking to a big global distributor right now as our distribution partner \u2014 because at the end of the day, you can\u2019t make a film and not have it distributed globally, and we don\u2019t have global distribution outlets here at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to investing in an emerging generation of talent through her company\u2019s EbonyLife Creative Academy, and expanding EbonyLife TV, Abudu has previously worked with Netflix on the acclaimed series Blood Sisters<\/em>. She\u2019s also close to opening a 180-seat EbonyLife Place London entertainment center on the British capital\u2019s Wandsworth Road to showcase African film, theater, music, food, art and fashion.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are also in the process of launching our own OTT platform [EbonyLife ON],\u201d says Abudu. \u201cWe will start small. We will build. But I do believe that it\u2019s important to take these baby steps and to get out there and to start creating some momentum. We can\u2019t keep waiting on anyone else to do this for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCo-productions continue to be one of the African industry\u2019s main drivers of investment and growth. My Father\u2019s Shadow<\/em> \u2014 which stars Sope D\u00ecr\u00eds\u00f9 and centers on a family reunion around the time of the 1993 Nigerian presidential election \u2014 was produced by the U.K.-Ireland operation Element Pictures in partnership with Nigeria\u2019s Fatherland Productions. Support has also come via BBC Film and the BFI, while international sales are being handled by Germany\u2019s The Match Factory.<\/p>\n

\n\tSarika Hemi Lakhani spent 18 years working across Africa with the Kenya-based One Fine Day Films (Nairobi Half-Life<\/em>) before moving to Berlin last year to join Tom Tykwer\u2019s X Filme Creative Pool. The hope ahead, she says, is for co-production treaties that balance creative control between those holding the purse strings from outside Africa and the talent the region is providing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are so many untapped stories on the African continent,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that means there are also so many untapped opportunities.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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African cinema has arrived in Cannes determined to blaze its own trail amid signs of a slowdown in investment across the continent from the world\u2019s leading streamers. Leading the way is Akinola Davies Jr.\u2019s drama My Father\u2019s Shadow, an Un Certain Regard contender that\u2019s being touted as the first Nigerian film ever selected for Cannes\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":669587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/My-Fathers-Shadow-Cannes-Film-Festival.jpg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[25562,2758,155500,33587,124783,1377],"class_list":["post-669586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-africa","tag-amazon","tag-cannes-2025","tag-film","tag-international","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}