This year’s Cannes Film Festival officially kicked off yesterday in Cannes, France, and it was preceded by a little buzz: African filmmakers, artistes and distributors will get a section to market their films at festival. The Pavillon Afriques, a platform for the promotion of African and Black cinema to film professionals from across the globe, would be championing the process.
This will be held within a tent at the Marché du Film (International Village) of the Cannes Film Festival. I’m excited about this because this initiative will help in the facilitation and distribution of African content from African filmmakers and key stakeholders. Furthermore, African film practitioners will be able to interact, sell films, find partners and expand their professional network with other film industry professionals at Marché du Film, world’s biggest film market.
On the Nollywood front, I can already imagine how this will be beneficial. The Cannes Film Festival is in its 72nd outing, and Nollywood stars reportedly attending the event are Joke Silva, Kunle Afolayan, Rita Dominic, Tope Oshin, Joke Silva, Mildred Okwo, Chioma Udeh of AFRIFF, Justin Morgan of Inertia pictures, Moses Babatope of FilmOne distribution, Guy Murray-Bruce of Silverbird distribution, Adedayo Thomas of the NFVCB, Ladipo Abayomi Augustine, and Lawal Gambo Zuwaira.
Themed Connecting the Past, Present and Future, the African market section of the Cannes Film Festival will have a full schedule with a mix of private and public sector roundtables, discussions on film financing and content distribution, a series of country produced destination seminars, celebrity-hosted panels, leadership workshops, film screenings and more, the program is set to be the most fascinating hub out of Cannes in 2019. The festival will run from May 14 to May 25.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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