As the fall festival season draws to a close, temperatures will soar next month in Durban, South Africa, where the 17th Durban FilmMart will be held from October 9-12. This year’s event comes amid rising hopes as well as ongoing concerns for an African industry at a crossroads.
There are many reasons to be optimistic for the continent’s filmmakers. Long excluded or ignored by festival programmers, African cinema has gained an undeniable place in the main programming lineups of A-list festivals. Proven auteurs are regularly joined on the red carpet by a maverick batch of newcomers, including South African directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, the duo behind last year’s Rotterdam-winning docuseries “Variations on a Theme,” pushing African filmmaking in new and exciting directions.
The talent portfolio has never been this rich and diverse. Watch Rwandan debutante Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo win the Golden Camera award at Cannes for her post-genocide drama “Ben’Imana” (pictured), or Nigerian directors Arie and Chuko Esiri’s “Clarissa,” a Lagos-set adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” starring Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo and Ayo. Witness him hit the Croisette. Edebiri was attacked by Neon. Venice gave the award for best first film to Cameroonian Auguste Bernard Kouemo Yanghu (“House of the Wind”). Based on talent alone, the future looks undeniably bright.
The fact that funding doesn’t just flow in the opposite direction is more encouraging than the flow of films northward from the Global South. African film production has long been financed by European funding agencies and cultural institutions, including the Next Narrative Africa Fund and CANEX Creations Inc., the intellectual property investment arm of the African Export-Import Bank. A number of domestic financing vehicles began to emerge, from corporate heavyweights such as MBO Capital, Volition Capital and Capital Film Productions to equity investors such as MBO Capital, Volition Capital and Capital Film Productions.
“For the first time in African film history, there are a number of capital players investing in film,” says Big World Cinema CEO Steven Markovitz, who, together with the African creative sector-focused HEVA Fund, recently spearheaded the inaugural African Film Investors Roundtable, bringing together leading investors and financiers of the continent’s creative industries.
To support this point, Markovitz says he is witnessing a “critical mass” of capital investors entering the market, splashing $100,000 to $3 million per project. “There is a moment where film is seen as a reliable investment asset class,” he says. “It is now up to us as producers to prepare for investors and begin to understand the needs of equity investors in this environment.”
But therein lies the problem. While financing opportunities for African producers are increasing, distribution channels are narrowing. Following successive waves of corporate consolidation and austerity that have seen global players such as Prime Video, Netflix and Canal+ exit or disinvest in the African market, “the number of buyers has decreased rather than increased,” says Marie Lora-Mungai, founder of consultancy Restless Global and a leading expert on Africa’s creative industries.
“There is more financing and capital than ever before… But the reason we are not seeing more deals despite the sudden availability of capital is that financiers can only invest or lend money if they are reasonably convinced that the film will make money back,” he says. “So capital is coming into a market where demand is contracting first, which is the exact opposite of what everyone was planning.”
If there’s anything good about it, it’s this:[African] producers and film entrepreneurs are not sitting idle [and] “Thinking outside the box to find various ways to solve the problem,” says Lora-Mungai. Policymakers in many countries are putting the creative industries front and centre, as local and regional streaming platforms again look for innovative ways to monetize the demand for African content.
Meanwhile, CANEX Creations Inc. financiers such as and initiatives such as the African Producer Accelerator, launched last year by Markovitz’s Great World Cinema and the Bertha Foundation, are increasingly directing their efforts towards curating market-ready commercial projects and matching them with potential investors.
Taken together, such topics reveal a rich range of talking points that African industry professionals will examine as Durban FilmMart launches at its sunny coastal home. Over the course of four days, this year’s DFM should reaffirm its influential role as a rare space where representatives of the continent’s dispersed screen industries can come together to discuss the challenges they face.
“We are still very separate,” says Tshepiso Chikapa Phiri, CEO of Known Associates Group and president of Durban FilmMart Institute. “Let’s get together and start talking about what cooperation looks like; cooperation in terms of infrastructure, cooperation in terms of policy, cooperation in terms of incentive strategy.
“We need to have much more structured conversations and much more intentional conversations,” he adds. “To talk for four days of DFM, then walk away and meet again the following year and have the same conversations is self-defeating. Talking is one thing. But action will be what separates us.”