Rwanda will from December 10-17 welcome back the annual Mashariki Africa Film Festival (MAFF), organisers have announced. The annual film festival did not take place last year due to the ban on entertainment events as one of preventive measures to contain the spread of Covid-19. This year’s festival will be held under the theme ‘Tell the Tale’, to encourage filmmakers to tell stories that can build a healthy and safe community. The week-long film festival will take place at two designated venues Kigali Convention Centre and Canal Olympia Cinema in Rebero. Over 800 films from different international filmmakers have so far been submitted and approved to be screened at the festival which normally attracts a big number of renowned players in the film industry, mainly directors, screenwriters, producers, actors and actresses from different parts of the globe. Tresor Senga, the brains behind Mashariki African Film Festival, addressing participants at a past festival. Some remarkable figures expected to attend this year’s festival edition include representatives from renowned online film distributor, Netflix, and officials from Discop Africa, a celebrated leading B2B market for film, television, and digital content distribution and co-production business in Sub-Saharan Africa. DISCOP Africa will celebrate its 25th edition in 2021 and will take place in Kigali from December 12 to 14. Tresor Senga, the brains behind the film festival, says that he looks forward to seeing local filmmakers take advantage of the presence of the two agencies, and showcase movie projects that will impress them so their movies get international recognition. “We want to showcase the projects done by Rwandan filmmakers as an opportunity to make sure that the projects will impress them [Netflix and Discop Africa] and see if they can help push in the promotion and distribution process,” Senga says. “They will be here to buy the best of Rwandan movies and in the region, especially the movies that will be screened during the festival, and those that will be awarded at the end of the festival,” he adds. There will also be representatives from Rwanda Film Office, a Rwanda Development Board (RDB) wing whose mandate is to support for the Rwandan film industry, by acting as a catalyst to sign co-production treaties with other countries and establish an international and regional presence at film festivals and markets. All the movies that will be screened at the festival were produced and directed by African filmmakers, telling stories about Africa, done in 2020. Apart from film screening, organisers have also lined-up a series of workshops during which participants will have time to exchange filmmaking experiences, and the festival will conclude by recognising the best performing filmmakers. Festival organisers are also working on a project dubbed ‘The Bridge’ aimed at supporting Africa’s 10 best movies, including Rwandan movies. One of the films that attendees can’t afford to miss is the screening of ‘Fig Tree’ whose story is built around a Jewish teenager who, during the Ethiopian civil war, hatches a scheme to keep her Christian boyfriend from being drafted, as she and her family prepare to flee the country and go to Israel. This year’s festival will attract popular international media agencies like BBC, Bonneville Distribution, DIFFA, Deutsche Welle and France Media Monde, among others.
