San Francisco Frontiers - Paris gets taste of Nigeria's Nollywood

Now in its 13th edition, the NOW festival this week showcases films not only from Nigeria's Nollywood but also Ghanaian, Kenyan and Senegalese productions and filmmakers from the African diaspora.

"With my partners, we came to the realisation that a city like Paris just could not ignore the cultural phenomenon that Nollywood had become," co-founder Serge Noukoue told AFP about the festival, which began in 2013.

"We just thought it was an opportunity to change the narrative around African film."

Last year, for the first time a Nollywood movie "My Father's Shadow" scored an official slot at Cannes, marking another step for an industry long seen as producing a stream of low-budget dramas.

The rise of streaming services and the growing popularity of African music such as Afrobeats and Amapiano has helped expose film culture to new audiences -- as well as increasing quality, access and funding.

But producers still struggle to reach outside Africa beyond the diaspora despite making many more films every year than Hollywood. India's Bollywood is the largest in terms of numbers produced.

- A 'lab for what's coming' -

The five-day NOW festival, based in the Paris classic arthouse L'Arlequin, showcases films such as "East West Love" a love story between Nigeria and Kenya, and "Evi Superstar", about a rising Nigerian singer forced to rebuild her career.

"Mothers of Chibok" looks at the impact of the kidnapping of the Chibok girls by jihadists in Nigeria in 2014, while "Batwing Unmasked: An African Superhero" examines the first African superhero in DC Comics universe.

Though streaming has given African film a wider audience and greater revenues, Nollywood is still growing more professional and structured, Noukoue said.

"I think we're looking at an industry that is ambitious, but that doesn't necessarily have the means to sustain that ambition at the moment," he said.

"We are in a place where there are a lot of things that are needed for Nollywood to actually reach its potential."

NollywoodWeek is a "lab for what's coming" and to showcase the creativity out of the continent.

Panels this week will look at music rights and AI in film.

"We want to break those boundaries and break those walls," Noukoue said. "But it's a lot of work to get to that."

P.Adams--SFF