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The first-ever edition of AfroBerlin put Africa in the spotlight at the Berlin Film Festival and in one key session asked how festivals, streamers, and the wider industry can — and should — support films and filmmakers from the continent.
AfroBerlin took over the conference center next to the European Film Market with standing room only for some sessions at the event, which was organized by Prudence Kolong’s consultancy biz Yanibes and the EFM.
Jacqueline Nsiah, a member of the Festival’s Selection Committee, spoke in a slot about empowering local filmmakers. She started her work for the Festival last summer and has bolstered its connections with the African film community. African films including Abderrahmane Sissako’s Black Tea, Mati Diop’s Dahomey, and Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Aria’s Pepe are in competition, and Mamadou Dia’s Demba is in the Encounters strand. “I think it’s not bad, but I think there’s always room for more to be honest,” she said about the level of African representation.
Festivals must forge deep local connections in Africa, according to outgoing Berlinale co-director Mariëtte Rissenbeek. “If you don’t have these connections and these networks, you just don’t see some of the films,” she said. “We get about 2,800 submissions, but you still miss a lot of films. I think what a good step, now, to reach out more to the African continent.”
Stream Of Opportunity?
Streamers can bring projects to global attention, but whether producers in Africa can bank on them to do so was up for debate, notably in light of Amazon’s plans to scale back origination in the region, as first revealed by Deadline. “Streamers are always looking for the quick money – so it’s no wonder that sometimes they change their strategy on a very short term,” Rissenbeek said. “I don’t think you can be built on streamers as a sustainable strategy for your own company.”
Wayne Borg, Managing Director, Media Industries, at Saudi Arabia-based media hub Neom, shared a different perspective. “The streamers were the first to take subtitled content out of the art house cinema world and into the mainstream,” he said. Producers should focus on making content for local audiences, he added, but the SVODs can power up global viewing. “Great stories will travel if you bring together all the components to enable that, they will find an audience, and today they will find an audience of scale because of those platforms.”
Finding Funding
Nsiah said “the biggest challenge is to find a way to create networks of funding opportunities on the continent,” adding that she was hopeful given new initiatives and spaces for cinema that are cropping up.
Pepe is a coproduction between the Dominican Republic, Namibia and Germany, and another Berlin title, Cece Mlay and Agnes Lisa Wegner’s The Empty Grave, is a copro between Tanzania and Germany. Coproduction is one way forward, but Nsiah also wants to see more films financed locally. “I’m definitely in favor of trying to find local ways of accessing funding,” she said. “We urge local African producers to find a way to tap into private investors or companies and find ways to make it enticing for them to fund film so we can also tell our stories authentically.”
Borg said Neom “is keen to engage more with the with the African industry, they are our geographic neighbors.” He added: “We want to create a regional hub for the Middle East and African marketplace… and provide the opportunity for the region to tell its stories and to compete on a global level.”
