Does the absence of African films in the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival point to a glass ceiling? Or is African cinema still slowly but surely finding its way to the top table?
The absence of African-made films among the 22 contenders for this year's Palme d’Or might suggest African filmmakers are still struggling to break into the world’s most prestigious film festival.
Not least because there is no shortage of film production across the continent.
Nigeria alone produces around 2,500 films a year via what's known as "Nollywood", while South Africa has become a major base for international shoots and both Morocco and Tunisia have built strong state-backed industries. Senegal, Rwanda and Kenya are investing in new talent.
Yet when the Palme d’Or line-up was announced, Africa was missing.
“Many media outlets noted with disappointment that, given all the current political tensions, the Cannes Film Festival has focused overwhelmingly on European and Western productions rather than truly opening up to cinema from the Global South," said Claire Diao, a French-Burkinabè film programmer and distributor.
African films are, however, present in other competition categories at the festival.
Diao points to Rwanda’s Ben’Imana by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, the Central African film Congo Boy by Rafiki Fariala and Moroccan director Leïla Marrakchi’s Strawberries, all of which are screening in the Un Certain Regard section.
Nigerian cinema will also be represented at the Directors’ Fortnight by the Esiri brothers’ Clarissa.
This year’s Cannes jury includes the Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankolé and the Irish-Ethiopian actor Ruth Negga. The opening ceremony was hosted by the Franco-Malian actor Eye Haïdara.
"African cinema is here too. Not just because of what’s on the screen," said producer Joaquim Landau.
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Western validation
The African cinema industry's lack of globally recognisable figures can hamper the visibility of a film, according to Diao.
“Very often, selection committees first look at who is behind the film,” she explained. “Is it a sales agent we know? Is it a distributor we know? Is it a producer we know? When the filmmaker is unknown, the cast is unknown, the country is unknown, they don’t start with the same chances as a film with a Pierre Niney or an Isabelle Huppert.”
In practice, African films often need Western validation before Cannes takes notice and the films that do make it through often arrive with European backing already in place.
Diao points to My Father’s Shadow by the Nigerian-British director Akinola Davies Jr. – selected at Cannes last year after recognition at Sundance and support from the British Film Institute.
Landau is not convinced Cannes is actively excluding African productions, noting that of the roughly 2,500 films submitted this year, only around 20 made the main competition.
“There are no Canadian films, no South American films, no Oceanian films this year,” he says. "And yet, do Canadians find themselves thinking, ‘Wow, our film industry isn’t good enough to make it to Cannes’?”
He also questions what the label "African cinema" means, given most successful filmmakers now work through international co-productions.
"What exactly is an African film? Is it a film directed by an African filmmaker of mixed heritage? Is the subject matter African? Is the funding African?“
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Nollywood paradox
Nollywood – the world’s second-largest film industry by volume after Bollywood – produces films on an industrial scale and employs millions. In 2023, the industry generated around $8m in ticket sales in Nigeria alone, and the cinema sector is the country’s second-largest employer after agriculture.
But while Nigeria is one of the few African countries with a genuinely self-sustaining film economy, its output has not so far made its mark internationally.
Many Nollywood productions are made primarily for domestic television and streaming audiences, not European arthouse festivals.
“The priority of producers remains the local market,” said Serge Noukoué, co-founder of the Nollywood Week Film Festival in Paris, “because the local market is important.”
"For a long time, Nollywood has suffered from certain stigmas, such as the notion that it is a low-quality industry," he added. "In reality, Nigeria is brimming with talent and actually boasts a much broader cinematic spectrum than one might imagine. The quality is there and it keeps increasing.”
A younger generation of Nigerian directors is emerging – such as CJ Obasi whose Mami Wata premiered at Sundance in 2023, won an Independent Spirit Award nomination and represented Nigeria at the 96th Academy Awards.
Lagos has also become a regular stop for international festival scouts.
And yet the route to Cannes is usually paved with European money and networks. Eighteen of the 22 films competing for the Palme d'Or had some form of French participation.
“There's also a form of protectionism,” Noukoué says, pointing to subsidy systems and quotas that favour films tied to European co-productions.
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Cracks in the glass ceiling
Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa have state-backed film centres and long-term support for productions. Landau says their industries are now among the continent’s most visible internationally and their films often do well abroad.
New state-backed initiatives are also emerging in Senegal, Benin and Kenya, he notes.
Elsewhere, filmmakers have to work with limited public funding and rely on piecemeal international partnerships.
“We are often dealing with survival cinema,” Diao says, with African directors frequently doubling as producers and distributors simply to get films made.
This impacts both who gets financed and what kind of stories are seen as exportable.
Landau says European distributors have spent years searching for films that confirm Western expectations of Africa – poverty, violence and war, what the industry sometimes calls “poverty porn”.
But a new generation, he says, "wants to tell stories about people who love each other, people who laugh, people who have a good time. Sometimes that translates into very commercial films, and ones that do well. So I get the sense that, little by little, the glass ceiling is still there, but it keeps getting cracked in all sorts of places".
That process is being helped by festivals such as Fespaco in Burkina Faso, Carthage in Tunisia and Durban in South Africa, which continue to grow as centres of African cinema in their own right.
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Diao, who is both a distributor and programmer, no longer likes the phrase “African cinema”, preferring instead to speak of “cinemas from Africa, in the plural”.
“There's creativity, and what's needed is greater curiosity, particularly from the programmers at these major festivals that launch filmmakers' careers – including dedicated roles to actively seek out films from Africa, as is the case in Venice, Berlin, Toronto. But that is not the case at the Cannes Film Festival."
This article is based on interviews from RFI's Debat du Jour in French.
