UK-Nigeria banker-turned-film financier Ademola Elebute is attending the Berlinale having backed Olive Nwosu’s Lagos-set Lady, which receives its European premiere in Panorama, and is on the lookout to co-finance projects from filmmakers from Africa and other under-represented parts of the world.
Elebute says he left his job at London’s Citibank in 2023 and formed UK-headquartered Amplify Capital with a view to working as an “advocate”, finding high net worth individuals across the African continent and colleagues and peers from banking with capital to back features, who otherwise may not have seen film as a worthwhile investment.
He is currently in conversations around investing in films that range between $300,000 and $3m and is keen to board projects from development stage.
Elebute grew up in Nigeria and Togo, before moving to the UK to complete his education. He spent 10 years working in banking in London, but with an ongoing interest in literature and philosophy. His early “experimental” film investments included Ethan Berger’s US 2023 Tribeca premiere The Line and Ramsey Nouah’s Nigerian film Tòkunbò, released by Netflix in 2024.
“I got to learn through my experience with Tòkunbò that there just wasn’t a formal financing framework right for filmmakers from this part of the world [Nigeria],” said Elebute. “It was very hit and miss. It became clear to me that I could play a part in helping the industry create some sort of framework and be the bridge between the custodians of capital and the filmmakers.”
He became involved in Lady after hearing about the project through a friend of friend, executive producer Kamila Serkebaeva. The film world premiered at Sundance and follows a taxi driver drawn into the underbelly of Lagos’ sex scene. Financing also comes from Film4, the BFI and Screen Scotland. UK producers are Alex Polunin of Glasgow-based Ossian International, John Giwa-Amu and Stella Nwimo, with Nigerian co-producers Adetokunboh Sangodoyin and Tunji Jamiu Shoyode. The UK’s HanWay Films is selling.
Elebute, who is based between Lagos and London, has ambition to scale up from relying on individual investors. “To make this sustainable and to give us the resources required, we need to go to bigger pools of capital. Eventually we want to be able to convince institutional fund managers. We’ve started some of that work.”
He is open to working with investors from across the world, however, he explains that if working with an African filmmaker, “Where we really want to make our name and create a selling point is that we really want to be able to mobilise local [African] investors, because we think it’s not enough for all the best projects to be funded internationally. You want ownership, and you want to reverse the discussion around where the economic rights and the control sits. You want it to sit within the continent, and you want to give that power to the filmmakers.”
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