Realness Institute unveils next cohort of Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy (exclusive)

African filmmaking agency Realness Institute has set the six African filmmaking professionals, spanning festivals, acquisitions and exhibition, who will take part in the third edition of its Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy (SALIA).

SALIA is a collaboration between Realness Institute and the Locarno Film Festival with the support of Geneva-based philanthropic organisation The StoryBoard Collective, which aims to foster film and TV talent in Africa. This year, the programme takes place during Cape Town’s creative industries’ networking and development event, Fame Week Africa, which runs from September 1-7.

This is the final edition to run as part of Fame Week, with a new event partner to be unveiled in due course.

The programme is led by Elias Ribeiro, director of Realness, and includes masterclasses, workshops and panel discussions. “We are grateful to our partners and with the opportunity to hold space for distribution, one of the most fractured parts of the value chain in the audiovisual business in Africa,” said Ribeiro.

The selected participants are:

• Awoua Keita (Ivory Coast), acquisitions director at African distributor Cote Ouest
• Bethlehem Tesfu (Ethiopia), festival coordinator for documentary film festival Addis International Film Festival (AIFF) on Human Rights
• Duwayne Murphy (South Africa), founding director of environment-focused Roots Film Festival
• Mphumelelo Mnisi (Eswatini), head of programmes for Eswatini TV
• Rehima Awol Ibrahim (Ethiopia), acquisition and programming manager at Kana Television
• Tshiamo Malatji (South Africa), filmmaker and exhibitor, director of CineBa! Film Club and Festival in Bloemfontein

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