Durban FilmMart's 17th Edition Turns Inward for African Solutions — SkimNews
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- Durban FilmMart runs its 17th edition Oct. 9–12 around the theme "Shifting Worlds, Turning Toward Ourselves," drawn from Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène's line, "Why be a sunflower and turn towards the sun? I myself am the sun."
- Director Magdalene Reddy said the market is "very much looking inward," asking how African cinema can "create systems that will work for us" and "consolidate" to generate homegrown solutions.
- "Ben'Imana" by Rwandan debutante Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo — a Cannes Caméra d'Or winner pitched at DFM two years ago — will open the market with a screening, a first for the event designed to showcase "our local content in our local context."
- The Think Tank strand will host a closed-door session with distributors, financiers and industry leaders on African film distribution, which Reddy said has been hit hard by successive waves of global corporate consolidation, alongside an audience-development push aimed at local viewers.
- Equitable co-production is a backbone of this year's program, with sessions organized with the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) network tackling how African producers can partner as equals — "even when they are coming with the stories, coming with the IP" — so financing flows back to the continent.
- South African policymakers from the Dept. of Trade, Industry and Competition, the National Film and Video Foundation and regional film commissions will hold closed one-on-one meetings with local industry amid "ongoing uncertainty" around South Africa's 25% cash rebate.
- The Ladima Foundation, supporting African women in film and TV, will use DFM to launch an initiative pushing for greater gender equity at African film festivals, one of several new partnerships including NEWF, CTIAF, Documentary Africa and The StoryBoard Collective.
Why it matters: DFM is using its 17th edition to assert that African screen industries must build distribution, financing and policy infrastructure on their own terms — not wait for outside partners — at a moment when global consolidation has squeezed African distribution and South Africa's 25% rebate remains in limbo. The market's ability to convene closed-door talks with the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition gives local filmmakers a rare direct channel to the officials who manage that rebate.
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