Africa filmmaking agency Realness Institute is connecting two of its initiatives and launching a third in partnership with FAME Week Africa, a September market event for African creatives.
Realness’ Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy, and the seventh edition of its Screenwriters’ Residency, will now be hosted at FAME Week Africa, which launched last year and holds its 2023 edition from September 3-9 in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Institute has also launched Episodic Pitches, a pitching event for series that will look to unite the concepts developed across Realness’ episodic efforts from 2021 to 2023. Ten creators will be invited to the September market to present their series ideas.
Mentors across the three programmes include Dennis Ruh, director of the European Film Market; Eddie Bertozzi, head of the Pardi di domani programme at Locarno; story development consultant Ayanda Halimana; and Thandeka Zwana, development executive at South Africa’s Indigenous Film Distribution. Realness co-founders Elias Ribeiro and Mehret Mandefro will also provide mentorship.
“Through this collaboration we aim to ignite African storytelling flare by supporting programmes of, and providing platforms for, the Realness Institute to increase the diversity of voices in the film industry, and lead to more interesting, varied, and nuanced stories,” said Martin Hiller, portfolio director of FAME Week Africa. “It will also give African filmmakers a chance of securing funding, distribution deals, and other resources that can help them bring their stories to life.”
Ribeiro, who is executive director of the Realness Institute and regional manager of the Locarno Industry Academy, hopes to expand the FAME partnership further in future, with the aim “to stimulate the appetite of buyers and investors to return to FAME Week Africa for more quality projects in the future.”
The Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy is a Locarno Film Festival initiative for the development of emerging film professionals in sales, distribution and programming. It selects nine individuals for a programme of networking, masterclasses, workshops and discussions from September 7-9, as well as curating the event’s short film programme.
The partnership with Realness “will continue to boost young and emerging professional into the local and international film industry network,” according to Markus Duffner, head of the Locarno Pro industry programme, and Marion Klotz, the Industry Academy Project Manager.
Mandefro, who is director of development and partnerships at Realness, gave the keynote address at the inaugural FAME Week last year. “This is the forum we have all been waiting for on the continent and having a formal partnership with the Realness Institute provides the talent we work with an effective on-ramp to secure deals in the global entertainment business,” said the executive.
Submissions are open for the Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy from today (April 18).
Realness increase
The partnership is part of an increase in activity from South Africa-based organisation Realness. Last month at Series Mania in France it debuted the first four shows from its AuthenticA Series Lab, a training programme for African episodic screenwriters.
Soil is from Nairobi-based Angela Wanjiku Wamai, whose debut feature The Pit played at Toronto Film Festival last year, and follows a woman who must restore the sinking fortunes of her family business after her husband’s sudden suicide.
Inspired by real events, Chantel Clark’s South African Crime Story follows a detective who seeks justice for a teenage girl who was murdered in an apparent pagan ritual. Pale Faces, Clark’s script for her feature directorial debut, was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab.
Ghanaian-British writer Jessica Hagan’s series Coup is a thriller about six passengers travelling to Ghana who are recruited to join a coup d’etat against the country’s government.
Nigerian filmmaker Tony Sebastian Ukpo pitched Masquerade, a horror series about a 13-year-old Nigerian American boy whose grief over losing his father manifests itself in the form of a malevolent spirit.
The four creators pitched their projects to a packed room at the Series Mania TV market in Lille, France on March 21. The Lab was presented in partnership with the Series Mania Forum industry strand and The Storyboard Collective, a Swiss philanthropic organisation which aims to develop transformative and authentic stories.
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