25 July, 2018 - 08:04
Financing African films has always required equal parts imagination and hustle, and as the global movie industry weathers its own seismic upheaval from new financing and distribution challenges, filmmakers on the continent are learning to adapt on the fly. By Christopher Vourlias
That was the takeaway of a Durban FilmMart panel July 21, where Dayo Ogunyemi, an investor and founder of 234 Media; Chioma Onyenwe, a producer and the director of the Africa Int'l. Film Festival; Todd Brown, head of international acquisitions at XYZ Films; and Michael Auret, a producer with Spier Films, reckoned with the transformation in how filmmakers today are forced to do business.
The pre-sales market is becoming progressively harder and harder, said Brown, whose company was the North American sales agent for recent South African fest hits Five Fingers for Marseilles and Number 37, and is developing an adaptation of South African sci-fi novel Apocalypse Now Now. That model was effectively built in the 1980s. And distribution now is not what it was in the 80s.
New players, like VOD platforms, have so far had a marginal impact on African financing schemes. While citing brand partnerships and government funding as key sources of coin for Nigerian filmmakers, Onyenwe said most producers still finance their movies through a combination of personal investment, and loans from family and friends. Outside of the continent's most prolific film biz, the options are even more limited.
By African standards, South Africa has an embarrassment of riches, thanks to soft funds from the likes of the National Film & Video Foundation (NFVF), the Dept. of Trade & Industry (DTI), and the Industrial Development Corp. (IDC). For young black filmmakers, initiatives like the Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund, and the DTI's 50% rebate for black filmmakers, only sweeten the deal, while broadcaster M-Net pumps roughly R2 billion (around $149 million) a year into local productions.
Still, as ambitions - and budgets - rise, local filmmakers often find themselves looking for co-production partners overseas. Trying to make a film that's just specifically for this market, or for the African market which is hard to exploit is just too difficult, said Auret. The theatrical market here is very small for what films are made for.
He cited examples like the Berlinale's World Cinema Fund and Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund as key sources of funding for African projects with international ambitions; for director Etienne Kallos' The Harvesters, which premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard this year, Auret structured a complex co-production with partners in Greece, France, and Poland.
TravelStart Flight and Hotel Bookings
TravelStart Bookings for the Film Industry
Get More Film Business South Africa
Select your Membership
At the Berlinale earlier this year, Neil Brandt, of Fireworx Media, offered a case study on the ambitious South Africa-Brazil co-prod The Sound of Animals Fighting, a gritty crime drama by South African helmer Sibs Shongwe-La Mer. The producer told Variety that by looking beyond the usual business models that rely on North American and European financing, the film can give producers from the global south' encouragement that we can look to colleagues around us to tell stories.
Filmmakers in Durban this week can be hopeful that new pathways for financing will emerge. With the 3rd annual BRICS Film Festival kicking off in the coastal city on July 22, all eyes will be on how the trading bloc can strengthen its cultural output through co-production treaties. South Africa is said to be in the final stages of signing a formal treaty with Brazil, while talks with China are also in advanced stages.
There's also the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which was signed in Kigali, Rwanda, earlier this year. Joining the 55 member states of the African Union into a free-trade zone that removes tariffs on 90 percent of goods, the agreement is said to include a provision for intellectual property in its second phase, according to Ogunyemi. That move could transform collaborations in film, TV and music across the continent.
Still, said Brown, whether they're in Africa or anywhere else in the world, successful filmmakers today have to learn to beg, borrow, and steal, and do whatever you need to do to leverage public money and soft money as far as you possibly can, and to get the market money down as low as you possibly can.
He drew on the examples of XYZ projects in Chile and Northern Ireland to show how directors working in small markets on limited budgets - challenges familiar to any African filmmaker - were able to maximize their resources by being realistic about [those limitations] and understanding from the beginning that what your film is worth and what your film costs don't necessarily have any relationship to each other.
He explained, Your film is worth what the market will pay for it. Your film costs as much as you can spend on it .Where things work on more contained budgets is when people come in, and they have an understanding of here's where my audience is, here's how I'm going to approach them, here's realistically what it's worth, and then they marshal the resources.
www.variety.com
Film Finance
Africa South Africa
Most recent headlines
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
The works of Plato state that when humans have an experience, some level of change occurs in their brain, which is powered by memory - specifically long-term me...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
25 July, 2018 - 08:04 
