Chioma Ude, the founder of the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF), has said her festival is ready for a film market.
She was speaking about the event she founded 15 years ago in a Deadline Exclusive. “It was important for me that the focus was on the continent as a whole, rather than just Nigeria,” she said. “I felt there was room for a festival that would be inclusive of everything the African diaspora has to offer.”
Since its start, AFRIFF has facilitated several events and invited quite a few stars to its programmes, including John Boyega and Ryan Coogler. In 2022, Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had its African premiere at AFRIFF.
Ude believes that Africa’s young population, with 70% of Africans under the age of 30, is a driver for the creative sector. “Young people’s interest lies in the creative sector. 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.”
However, Ude has faced challenges, as she 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 said. “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.”
According to Ude, the festival relies on sponsorship and private funding, and is now planning to introduce a formal market component alongside the film lineup. “We are ripe for a film market,” she said. “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.”
Ude believes that it is essential to attend other festivals to learn new trends for growth. “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.”
