Two Nigerian films make FESPACO

Africa’s longest-running film festival, Festival of Pan Africa Cinema (FESPACO), has shortlisted two Nigerian films to contest, each, in the 35mm and video format categories. The films; One Man Show by Newton Aduaka and Heroes and Zeroes by Niji Akanni, are part of the 102 films shortlisted for the 10-day festival which runs from February 23 to March 3, 2013.

Aduaka’s film, shot on 35mm, a celluloid format for feature films, will be competing for the Etalon D’or, the festival’s top prize alongside South Africa’s film, How To Steal 2 Million among others. The Etalon D’or is reserved exclusively for films in that professional standard. Akanni’s film on the other hand, starring veteran actor, Bimbo Manual, Akin Lewis and Ghanaian actress Nadia Buari, will be slugging it out in the video category.

The video and television categories are slots created recently by the festival to accommodate movies made on lesser formats, following the popularization of Nollywood movies and other Africa’s home video productions around the world.

In the last edition of the biennial festival which held in 2011, a Nigerian film, Champion of Our Time, directed by Mak Kusare, won the second place prize in the video category, having contested with another Nigerian film, The Figurine, produced and directed by Kunle Afolayan, among others movies in the continent. Although, Restless City, a 35mm film by US-based Nigerian filmmaker, Andrew Dosumu competed for the top prize in that same year and lost, Nigerian films that have so far made it to the FESPACO top prize rank are films done by Nigerians in the Diaspora.

However, the first time that a Nigerian film had won the Etalon D’or was in 2007, when Aduaka’s film entitled Ezra clinched the prize. That victory by Nigeria also marked the third time that a film from Anglophone Africa had taken the festival’s grand prize since it was established in 1969. Aduaka’s success in 2007 followed that of Ghanaian Kwa Ansah’s Heritage Africa and South African Zola Maseko’s Drum in 1989 and 2005 respectively.

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