Rwanda’s City Maid has been named among Africa’s 10 films and TV series breaking the boundaries as per the survey conducted by the Pan African Film Festival (PAFF). PAFF is arguably Americas largest and most prestigious Black film festival. Each year, it screens more than 150 films made by and/or about people of African descent from around the world. Designated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as an official qualifying film festival for live action and animation short films, PAFF holds the distinction of being the largest Black History Month event in the country. City Maid found itself in the same box as Nigerian movie Castle and Castle, Cook Off (Zimbabwe),Fatsani: A Tale Of Survival (Malawi), Fishermans Diary (Cameroon), Just in Time (Kenya), Riona (Fighting Fate) (Nigeria), Dede (Ghana), Blood and Water (South Africa) and Lanjuro (Gambia) which movies, according to PAFF, are followed most by Africans. Produced in Kinyarwanda, City Maid has proved so popular that people across the continent are asking for it to be subtitled in English and other African languages. The suspense-filled movie series, which airs every Thursday at 9:00 PM and Saturday at 12:30 PM on Rwanda Television, is produced by a production team made up by filmmakers who know how to leave viewers on the edge of their seats, especially during the period of the pandemic. It brings together some of Rwanda’s prominent actors and actresses like Emmanuel Ndayizeye (Nick), Laura Musanase (Nikuze), Nadege Uwamwezi (Nana) and Mustafa Uwihoreye (Deo) among others. For Wilson Misago, the film executive Producer, seeing their film breaking boundaries signals that the efforts made over the past five years since the film started to show on Rwanda Television are finally paying off as a filmmaker who always wanted to see one of his movies going from local to international. “Finding City Maid featuring among the most watched movies in Africa gives us courage to do even better in what we do. We have more movies that have potential to go even further in the future. “The fact that people still watch it even if it has no subtitles shows how far it has gone throughout our audience. It is really a positive feedback for us,” he added. City Maid is a production of Zacu Entertainment which is also behind other movie series, Indoto and Ejo Si Kera, which Misago is confident have potential to reach a wider audience than City Maid. “These are projects which are way bigger than City Maid to the point that they could, in the next two or three years, be shown via world’s biggest TVs and platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO and others,” he said. Founded in 1992 by award-winning American actor Danny Glover, PAFF was initiated as a platform to present and showcase the broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images, help to destroy negative stereotypes and depict an expanded vision of the Black experience. For nearly 30 years, PAFF has showcased films from all parts of the world representing different countries from across Africa and has over the years opened the minds of its audiences, and transported them to far-away places and back home again. With the pulse on the international film market, PAFF has always believed film and art can lead to better understanding and foster communication between peoples of diverse cultures, races, ethnicities, and lifestyles in an entertaining way while at the same time, serving as a vehicle to initiate dialogue on the important issues of present world.
