NollywoodWeek organisers promise ‘more daring’ and ‘diverse’ films at Paris festival • FRANCE 24

Nollywood Nigerian cinema is the world’s second largest film industry in terms of output and is loved by audiences from all over the globe. One of the international events helping shine a spotlight on films made in Nigeria and other African countries is Nollywood week film festival held here in Paris. The 12th edition gets underway this Wednesday and organizers are promising it will be better than ever. To talk more about this, I’m joined on set by S. Nuku and Nadira Shakur. Thank you very much for being with us. You’re the founders of Nolly week film Nollywood week film festival. Um I’m going to start with you S. You’ve said this year that the films u that are being shown are of higher quality. What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean in terms of technical uh quality or are the films stories richer? Uh we’re definitely focusing on stories this year. So I would say the originality of the stories as well as the diversity is what is really standing this edition apart. Yeah. And do you mean that that we’re seeing an expansion of the type of genres we’re seeing in these films? And what about the taboss? Are we seeing fewer taboos as we get the new generation in? Uh definitely, especially when you look at where Nollywood comes from. You know, Nollywood is a relatively young industry that started in the early 90s. Um it used to be very it used to be very quote unquote basic stories uh that were about issues that were happening in the neighborhood or within the family space. And now we are really uh we have everything you know from horror films uh to action movies. We have a wide range of uh of uh of styles of genre and the directors are much more daring that they’ve ever been. Uh so we have a new crop as well in terms of generation a lot of new directors new talent that is coming up and we are very happy uh with our festival to be able to showcase that to the world. And in Nadira, several films see feature a strong female lead often uh commenting on the kinds of social pressures that they have to deal with like postpartum depression for example. Was that a conscious choice that you made in selecting these films? Um I won’t say it’s a conscious choice um because we do first just go off of what films we have after we receive the selections. Um and then from there usually the theme speaks to us of kind of what comes through. we actually have a lot of female uh directors and writers. So, a lot of women that are behind the cameras in in Nigeria and Nollywood and especially in the selection that we have this year. So, I think just naturally a lot of these issues that are relevant um for women just naturally came through because there’s so many women that also have a say behind the behind the camera. And uh this edition you have a jury which will select uh a winning film in two categories. Is it short and and feature film? Tell us about that. How did how did the jury come into play? Uh we started with just the audience award. So the the audience is invited to actually vote after each screening and um and for us it’s it’s uh it was part of the philosophy and the the DNA of the festival because uh the festival is for the audience. Nollywood started really as a as a as an industry that was targeting uh the market. And um after a while we realized that we also needed to have a another component which is a more professional uh um uh component to the festival. And so um having the jury just provides us with a different uh set of eyes. And um and it’s also interesting to see the difference between what the audience uh uh feels is the best film versus what the the jury feels is the best film. So it’s a it’s a it’s a good dynamic and it um it’s something that also has an impact after the festival as well. All right. Well, let’s talk about Nollywood in the age of streaming. Uh Nadira, do you think this has worked to the advantage of of filmmakers? Do you think it helps bring in um a wider audience? I think there’s so that question is a very loaded question and it’s a very good question. Um it has done both. It has definitely brought in a larger audience. um and even just you know put it put it made it accessible in places where they didn’t have any access to to it before. Um but it is interesting you bring up streaming because we do have a panel discussion that will be about streaming and the effects of that it has had on Nollywood and Nigerian distribution as as a whole. So I mean that is actually one of the points that we will be discussing. Um and yeah we we think that that will be a very great discussion. We have several directors and um people who work directly in the industry and with streaming platforms that will be able to talk more on that and and do you think that profitability also comes into play in this question? I mean uh perhaps streaming platforms have also helped to to styy uh pirating that was a big problem for the industry earlier on. Yeah, I mean profitability is definitely uh the key because when we talk about Nollywood as a as an industry is the second in in the world in terms of production, but the profitability is is is far beyond uh far sorry uh behind a lot of other industries. And so right now it’s about how to make things viable. It’s about uh how to to to really monetize properly. And so the the platforms come into play but at the same time you don’t want to create too much of a dependency visa v the platforms. So all of that will be discussed at the festival. Um and we are we’re looking forward to to having great conversation that hopefully also will lead to to uh to some changes and improvement in the industry as a whole. And and one of the goals when this festival first started out was bridging the gap between u franophhone French speaking and English speaking uh Africa. tell us about how you went about that and and some of the evidence that you’re seeing that this is that these two uh communities or parts of Africa have come together. Yeah. Well, yeah, there’s several different examples. Um in the beginning it was quite a challenge um because even just you know the confusion between Nijera franophone country and Nigeria and anglophone country um just making that uh distinction um but not along with the festival but just even just with what’s happening around us with Afro beats you know for example becoming just such a strong um and identifiable market that’s coming out of Nigeria we’ve noticed that there’s been a big shift in understanding um more of the country and also just more looking between uh the franophhone and af and anglophone on um African markets. And for us, what we do, we always make it our first point to make sure that we devote all of our funding towards u or most of our funding towards um subtitling all the films. That’s the first, you know, obviously gateway in terms of making it understandable for everybody. We have Q&As’s and the Q&A are always bilingual. Um we we tried to create this kind of universe where the two languages don’t create any kind of division during the festival. So, you’ll hear every language spoken during the festival. But um another interesting thing is that now we even hear French audiences using pigeon which is coming out of Nigeria. So it’s actually even a step beyond just going into having that understanding with English but even going further into the culture. So why do you think s that these films are not more present in American US cinemas and other cinemas in Europe? Uh I think the industry at large still has quite a bit of gatekeeping what we call gatekeeping uh in you know which is um the way that distributors for instance are funded. There’s a lot of grants and subsidies in order to push uh certain film uh specifically European funded films and obviously those uh those films are not funded by Europe. So the whole system as a whole um is is quite difficult is a difficult thing to crack. Um but we are hoping and we we can see the difference you know we’ve been doing this for more than a decade now and um you know we can see now that some films are also being released in the cinema just commercial releases uh we are seeing u more attention being given to to Nollywood and African films in general. So we are we’re still optimistic and hopeful that you know in the future um those films can actually be part of the mainstream as well. All right, Suku and Nadira Shakur, thank you very much for speaking to us on France 24. And if our viewers are in Paris, they can catch the Nollywood week film festival in Paris starting from Wednesday.

Nollywood – Nigerian cinema – is the world’s second-largest film industry in terms of output and has evolved a great deal since emerging in the 1990s. However, it still faces challenges as a relatively young industry, including profitability. One of the international events helping to shine a spotlight on films made in Nigeria and other African countries is the NollywoodWeek Film Festival in Paris. As the twelfth edition gets underway this week, we speak to Serge Noukoué and Nadira Shakur, the event’s founders. They tell us how Nollywood filmmakers are now “much more daring” and discuss how the industry is navigating the age of streaming.
#cinema #Nollywood #Nigeria

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/B9AU.y

🔔 Subscribe to France 24 now: https://f24.my/YTen
🔴 LIVE – Watch FRANCE 24 English 24/7 here: https://f24.my/YTliveEN

🌍 Read the latest International News and Top Stories: https://www.france24.com/en/

Like us on Facebook: https://f24.my/FBen
Follow us on X: https://f24.my/Xen
Bluesky: https://f24.my/BSen and Threads: https://f24.my/THen
Browse the news in pictures on Instagram: https://f24.my/IGen
Discover our TikTok videos: https://f24.my/TKen
Get the latest top stories on Telegram: https://f24.my/TGen

2 comments

Comments are closed.