Filmmaking in Rwanda and the East African region faces one major hurdle: the critical shortage of film schools to impart the necessary skills to budding filmmakers.

This problem is further compounded by the fact that even fewer of the available film schools teach screenwriting –a critical part of the filmmaking process.

This is why, for the past six years, the Maisha Film Lab has been coming to Kigali; to hold screenwriting labs for budding filmmakers.

Held at the Kwetu Film in Kagugu between July 30 and August 6, this year’s was the fifth such workshop to be held in Rwanda.

The eight day workshop drew fifteen participants, all budding filmmakers from Rwanda, and who had to endure a competitive selection process.

"This year we are here just for screen writing, and as you know without a good story you do not have a film,” explained Fibby Kioria, the programme director for Maisha Film Lab at the close of the lab.

Kioria further explained that the core of Maisha’s business is training screen writers in how to develop their stories to be ready for scripts.

"We called for applications about three months ago, received so many applications, and sent them out to various reading committees –internationally acclaimed screen writers and readers who are friends of Maisha and who do this for absolutely nothing. They read the scripts and everybody sent in their observations and we tabulated the best fifteen participants that were selected for the course,” she added.

This year, there were four mentors to facilitate the workshop.

"We have a lot of writers out there, but screenwriting in particular is not being taught in film schools, so we need to constantly be training. So we go around East Africa at the film festivals partnering with them, and here in Rwanda, the Kwetu Film Institute and Rwanda Film Festival are our partners in bringing this to the people of Kigali,” Kioria further explained.

Benko Pluvear, a 24 year-old upcoming filmmaker, emerged winner of this years’ screen writing contest, and walked away with a cash prize of $5,000, which will go into production of the film.

His winning script is a romantic comedy titled, Ride in a Coffin. It is a story about a shy boy who asks for a ride on a pick-up truck, then sees a girl walking up to him. The pick-up has a coffin inside, so the boy ducks into the coffin to hide away.

Other passengers climb the truck, and then the girl comes and sits on the coffin while the boy lies inside. When they reach the bus stop the girl gets up to go and the boy also emerges from the coffin.

"When you win you have to make the movie. The grant given to me will go into production of this film, especially now that I have all these mentors at my disposal,” an excited Benko said after scooping the award last Thursday. 

Another mentor, Kivu Ruhorahoza had this to say:

"I’m very impressed with the potential, because so many of them when they applied, quite frankly their scripts were unreadable in terms of form and content. It was wobbly, it was all over the place, but at the end we could see clear stories being developed into scripts. I saw a lot of potential, and I saw two or three really good ideas that could easily turn into multi-million dollar productions, because everything begins with an idea.”

About the Maisha Film Lab

Maisha Film Lab is a non-profit training initiative for emerging East African filmmakers. Based in Kampala, Uganda, the program provides hands-on training and mentorship in such aspects of film as; screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, editing, and sound recording.

Maisha has been running these training programs in East Africa for the last 10 years.

This year, the programs kicked off with a screenwriting lab in Uganda between June 26 and July 3, before moving to Zanzibar (July 18-25).

Their next stop was Rwanda, where the screenwriting lab ran from July 30 to August 6 at the Kwetu Film Institute.

Thereafter, Maisha team will be headed to Kenya. Kenya is credited with producing one of the most prominent Maisha alumnus; the actress Lupita Nyong’o, who also worked as Maisha’s production coordinator in 2006.

She was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, and won the Critics Choice Awards 2014, all for her outstanding performance in the movie, "12 Years a Slave”.