When Chioma Ude founded the Africa International Film Festival in 2010, her mission was clear: Create a hub for the African filmmaking community that would connect new and existing African talent with the global film business while also, crucially, providing a place that would empower and train the next generation of the continent’s storytellers.
Already a prolific entrepreneur with a background in marketing and logistics, Ude was making a name for herself in the African entertainment space at the time. After doing a road show for the Nigeria Film and Videos Censors Board in London, she was brought aboard as a project manager for the ION International Film festival, a global touring festival which was headed to Nigeria.
Her work impressed local government officials and the experience, says Ude, gave her the idea to launch a Lagos-based international film festival with a wider focus on the African continent.
“It was important for me that the focus was on the continent as a whole, rather than just Nigeria,” says Ude. “I felt there was room for a festival that would be inclusive of everything the African diaspora has to offer.”
Fifteen years later and Ude has successfully positioned AFRIFF as a pivotal event on the film festival calendar. Taking place annually in November, the event has trained more than 10,000 young adults in 12 African countries through its AFRIFF Talent Development Program and has connected them with mentors from all over the world. The festival has now become a key platform for facilitating international co-productions and has welcomed stars such as John Boyega, Ryan Coogler and Ini Edo, among others. In 2022, Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had its African premiere there, with the director offering a masterclass to attendees.
The ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ African premiere in Lagos, Nigeria.
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Ude says Africa’s young population — 70% of Africans are under the age of 30 — is a big driver for the creative sector in the region. “Young people’s interest lies in the creative sector,” she says. “So, widening that horizon for them in film was something that was really important to me. I could see how people would get engaged very quickly, so, from the get-go, it’s always been about training.”
But it hasn’t been without its challenges. Ude, who has also co-founded the Africa Foundation for the Development of Motion Pictures, Arts and Culture as well as production outfit LaVida Studios, says some of the biggest hurdles have been “teaching people what the festival is about and what its benefits are as well as sourcing funding.”
“If people don’t see value in the festival, funding becomes more difficult,” she says. “The political situation is up and down in Nigeria and when I started, I quickly realized that to rely on government funding would be challenging. So, I decided to build the industry of the festival itself and grow it to a level that the government could not possibly ignore.”
And it has worked. The festival, which relies on sponsorship and private funding, has grown from strength to strength. For organizations looking to get more of a foothold in Africa, they often look to partner with AFRIFF. “With sponsorship, we historically have gravitated more to the West. For example, if Amazon comes in, they’ll partner with you to do many things. I look more towards organizations that need relevance in Nigeria because that works for us.”
Next year, Ude plans to introduce a formal market component to sit alongside the film lineup, something she is convinced will take AFRIFF to the next level.
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“We are ripe for a film market,” says Ude. “What we are doing now is getting ourselves ready for the next phase of economic growth, so it’s right that we have a film market that runs concurrently.”
The festival has become an increasingly hot destination for international delegates over the years, but in 2024, Ude noticed an uptick in the number of attendees coming from the African diaspora. “It’s changed the way I was looking at the trajectory of the festival,” she says. “Before now, it was more about us going global in the sense of partnering more with the West, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but now I’m having many more conversations with companies in the diaspora and it’s opened my eyes to new partnerships. I’m really encouraged by the interest from other African nations — growth in this area is the next goal.”
She continues: “It’s important to keep going to other festivals so that we can feel the pulse of the industry at large, and look at what the new trends are and what people are looking for — we don’t want it to be the same every year. Growth is continuous and learning is continuous, so you have to add those elements to the festival.”
Content shared from deadline.com.