From Traditional Greenlights to the Unicorn Playbook: Financing & Alternative Funding Models

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As traditional financing structures continue to exclude emerging creatives and projects with bold or complex narratives, new funding ecosystems are reshaping how stories get made globally. From diaspora capital and equity collectives to brand partnerships, product placement, and platform-driven vertical drama financing, this panel explores alternative pathways to production across Africa and beyond. Using “unicorn” case studies such as Sinners by Ryan Coogler, the conversation will unpack how visionary creators are structuring deals, attaching talent, and leveraging global networks to unlock financing while retaining creative control. Bringing together perspectives from multiple regions, this panel highlights how underrepresented storytellers can access capital, build momentum, and scale in today’s evolving content economy.

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Key Themes:

• Beyond Traditional Gatekeepers: Why emerging creatives and non-conventional stories struggle to secure funding—and how new models are breaking those barriers

• The “Unicorn” Playbook: Lessons from standout projects like Sinners—packaging, talent attachment, and strategic positioning to unlock financing

• Diaspora Capital & Collective Investment: Leveraging global networks and communities to finance projects across borders

• Brand Financing & Product Placement: Integrating brands as strategic partners in content creation and funding

• Ownership, Control & Sustainability: Building financing structures that allow creators to retain IP and scale long-term

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Moderator: Natasha Preville, Producer, Founder, Brixton Film Festival, UK + Jamaica

Speakers:

• Erik Gordon, VP Corporate Partners, FilmHedge, USA

• Steven Adams, Founder, Alta Global Media, USA

• Fela Oki, CEO, Hyphen8, UK + Nigeria

• Mimo Kabara, Founder, Major Events Media, Proplamar, France + Canada + Lebanon

• Alechia Reese, Managing Director, RGLP Group, Vice-President, Creative Juice, USA

Rebuilding Access in a Fragmented Global Market

In a rapidly shifting global landscape, traditional distribution pathways are becoming increasingly unstable—particularly in Africa and across parts of the Global South. The withdrawal or reduced investment of major platforms such as Netflix and Amazon in certain African markets, alongside structural changes and consolidation within regional services like Showmax, has created new uncertainty around how films reach audiences locally. At the same time, access to Western theatrical releases remains largely dependent on co-production structures that are often difficult to secure and navigate for many producers. This panel explores how filmmakers are responding to this fragmentation by building alternative, hybrid, and more autonomous distribution models that rethink how films travel across borders, platforms, and audiences.

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Key Themes:

• Platform Retrenchment & Market Instability: The impact of shifting commitments from global streamers and regional platform restructuring on African film distribution

• The Co-Production Gatekeeping Effect: Why co-production remains the main gateway to Western theatrical release—and why it is difficult for many producers to access

• Hybrid & Independent Distribution Models: Emerging strategies combining festivals, niche platforms, community screenings, and self-distribution

• Direct-to-Audience as Infrastructure: Building owned audiences through digital platforms, social channels, and creator-led ecosystems

• Reclaiming Market Access from the Global South: How regional collaboration and cross-border partnerships can rebuild stronger, more resilient distribution pipelines

• Beyond Platforms: The Future of Film Circulation: Rethinking distribution as a multi-layered system rather than a single platform dependency.

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Moderator: Carmen Thompson, Head of Distribution & Special Projects, We Are Parable, UK

Speakers:​

• Betty Sulty-Johnson, Founder, Habebos Studios, France + Martinique

• Kalungi Ssedebandeke, Actor, Writer, Director, UK + Uganda

• Maskelah Gabriel-Adams, Distribution Specialist & Sale Agent, Founder, AfroFilms, UK + Ghana

• Moses Babatope, Group CEO, The Nile Media Entertainment Group, Nigeria | TBC

• +2 Speakers

Reclaiming voice, identity, and authorship in global cinema

In this intimate conversation, Jimmy-Jean Louis, Maria Gal, and Welket Bungué come together to reflect on their journeys as international actors navigating identity, authorship, and representation across global industries. From Haiti to Brazil to Guinea-Bissau and Europe, these artists have built careers that bridge cultures while challenging dominant narratives and industry expectations. This session explores what it means to claim narrative ownership in a globalized film landscape—how to remain authentic while working across markets, how to negotiate roles and representation, and how artists can actively shape the stories they are part of. Through personal insights and lived experience, they will discuss the opportunities and constraints of working internationally, the importance of cultural sovereignty, and their vision for the future of storytelling. A powerful dialogue at the intersection of career, culture, and creative agency, this conversation highlights the role of actors not just as performers, but as key voices in redefining how stories are told and who gets to tell them

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Moderator: Serge Noukoué, Founder, Nollywood Week & Okadia Media, France + Benin

Speakers: 

• Jimmy Jean-Louis, Actor, Author, Haiti

• Welket Bungué, Actor, Director, Guinea-Bissau + Portugal + Germany

• Maria Gal, Actress, Producer, TV Host, Brazil 

Who Shapes Tomorrow’s Narratives—and On What Terms?

What if the future of storytelling is not about better tools—but about entirely new narrative systems? As AI, real-time engines, and interactive formats begin to blur the line between creator, audience, and platform, storytelling is shifting from a finished product to a living, adaptive experience. In this context, authenticity is no longer just about representation—it becomes a question of who sets the logic of the story itself.

Hosted by the Black Filmmakers Group at Syracuse University, this session pushes beyond familiar debates to explore what storytelling could look like when authorship is distributed, narratives are dynamic, and cultural frameworks are encoded into the technology from the start. For African, diasporic, and diverse creators, this is not simply about inclusion—it is about designing the future architecture of storytelling, where culture is not translated or approximated, but embedded at the core of how stories are generated, experienced, and owned.

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Key Talking Points:

• From Linear Stories to Living Systems: Storytelling as adaptive, interactive, and continuously evolving across formats and audiences.

• Encoding Culture into Technology: Moving beyond representation toward integrating cultural logic, language, and worldview into creative tools.

• Authorship in a Multi-Actor Environmen: When creators, audiences, and machines co-shape narrative outcomes—who holds creative authority?

• Designing New Narrative Economies: Ownership, value, and monetization in a world where stories are no longer fixed objects.

• The Role of Academia as a Creative Lab: How institutions like Syracuse University can act as testing grounds for new storytelling paradigms

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Moderator: Yusuf Abdul-Qadir, Technologist, Producer, USA

Speakers:

• Speaker 1 

• Speaker 2

• Speaker 3

Tamazight storytelling, Indigenous aesthetics, cultural preservation

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Amazigh storytelling is often framed as regional or niche, yet it sits at the heart of a broader African conversation about language, identity, and narrative ownership. Across North Africa, filmmakers working in Tamazight are not only preserving a linguistic heritage—they are reshaping how African histories, cosmologies, and visual cultures are represented on screen. This session positions Amazigh cinema within a wider continental dynamic: one where Indigenous knowledge systems, oral traditions, and symbolic aesthetics challenge dominant cinematic frameworks. It explores how these creators navigate pressures to conform to global market expectations while remaining rooted in local realities—and how their work contributes to a more complex, layered understanding of African storytelling as a whole.

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Key Themes:

• Language as Resistance and Continuity: Filmmaking in Tamazight as a deliberate act of cultural preservation and narrative sovereignty.

• Indigenous Aesthetics Within African Cinema: Symbolism, landscape, temporality, and oral tradition as alternatives to dominant visual grammars. 

• Between Local Grounding and Global Circulation: Navigating visibility, funding, and distribution without diluting cultural specificity.

• Re-centering Indigenous Narratives in the African Canon: How Amazigh storytelling reshapes and expands what is understood as “African cinema.”

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Moderator: Serge Noukoué, Founder, Nollywood Week, Okadia Media Distribution, France + Benin

Speakers:

• Jihan Al Tejani, Filmmaker, Visual Artist, Documentarian, Egypt + France

• Myriam Saghy, Emerging Producer, Morocco

• Moufida Fedhila, Filmmaker, Producer, Founder, Yol FilmHouse, Tunisia + France

Africa–Asia co-productions, shared genre innovation, cross-market distribution

As global cinema shifts toward multipolar storytelling, Africa and Asia are emerging as two of the most dynamic creative forces shaping the future of film. This panel explores the growing ecosystem of Africa–Asia co-productions, where filmmakers, studios, and financiers are beginning to collaborate across borders to develop original IP, hybrid genres, and globally scalable stories. From shared mythology and genre experimentation to co-financing structures and cross-market distribution strategies, the conversation highlights how both regions can move beyond traditional Western-centric models. Recent collaborations—such as South Africa–Korea festival exchanges, Nollywood–Indian co-production discussions, and Japanese–African animation and documentary partnerships showcased at major markets like TIFFCOM and Durban FilmMart—signal a new wave of creative alignment. This panel examines how these corridors are being built in real time and what it will take to scale them into sustainable global pipelines.

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Key Themes:

• Africa–Asia Co-Production Momentum: Emerging partnerships across Korea, India, Japan, China, and African film industries

• Genre Innovation & Hybrid Storytelling: Blending anime, Nollywood drama structures, martial arts cinema, Afrofuturism, and myth-based narratives

• Cross-Market Financing Models: Co-development structures and shared risk financing between African and Asian producers

• Festival & Market Bridges: The role of platforms like TIFFCOM, Busan, Durban FilmMart, and Cannes in enabling partnerships

• Distribution Beyond the West: Building Asia–Africa audience circuits that reduce dependency on traditional Western gatekeepers

• Case Studies & Early Collaborations: South Korea–South Africa festival exchanges, India–Africa co-production dialogues, and Japan–Africa documentary and animation pilots emerging through industry market

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Moderator: TBD

Speakers:

• Mandlakiyase Dube, Award Winning Director, Producer, Screenwriter, South Africa

• Speaker 2

• Speaker 3

New Talent, New Perspectives, New Directions

This 20-minute spotlight session is dedicated to a new generation of producers, directors, and creative talents whose work reflects the evolving landscape of global storytelling. Positioned at the intersection of discovery and opportunity, it offers a curated platform for emerging voices to present their vision, share their journeys, and connect with industry professionals. More than an introduction, this session is about visibility and trajectory—highlighting creators who are not only developing compelling work, but also redefining how stories are told, produced, and positioned in today’s market. It is a moment to surface fresh perspectives and signal the next wave of talent shaping the industry.

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Moderator: Yared Dibaba, TV Host, Producer, Germany + Oromia / Ethiopia

Speakers:

• Natasha Ayoo, Visual Director, Kenya

• Speaker2 (Beth Powell)

Authenticity in Cross-Cultural Collaborations

Building Meaningful Global Films Without Losing Cultural Truth

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As international film collaborations accelerate across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, creators are increasingly faced with a critical question: how do we collaborate globally without diluting cultural specificity? This masterclass examines the creative, ethical, and practical dimensions of cross-cultural filmmaking, focusing on how to preserve authenticity while building commercially viable international projects. Led through real-world case studies and industry insights, the session unpacks how filmmakers, producers, and writers can navigate cultural nuance, avoid tokenism, and ensure that collaboration becomes a space of mutual respect rather than creative extraction. It also explores how authentic storytelling can strengthen—not limit—global market appeal when handled with intention and precision.

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Key Talking Points:

• Authenticity vs Market Adaptation: How to stay true to cultural voice while designing films for international audiences

• Avoiding Tokenism in Global Collaborations: Recognising and preventing superficial or extractive representation in co-productions

• Creative Power Balance in Co-Productions: Who leads the story, who owns the narrative, and how decisions are shared

• Cultural Consultation & Embedded Collaboration: Best practices for integrating cultural advisors, local creatives, and lived experience

• Case Studies in Successful Cross-Cultural Films: Examples of productions that successfully balanced authenticity with international reach across multiple territories and creative teams

• Building Trust Across Borders: Long-term collaboration models that go beyond one-off co-productions and transactional partnerships

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Masterclass Host: Tera Carissa Hodges, Entrepreneur, Storyteller, USA

Screening 2

Title: Miriam Makeba, The Voice of Africa

Genre: Documentary​

Synopsis: A powerful against-the-odds tale of how a fearless African girl singing in a township choir became a legendary global celebrity, the first African to win a Grammy award and an influential & revolutionary social justice icon.

Runtime: 131 Min

Director: Mandlakayise W. Dube

Writers: Andrea Vogt and Paul Russell

Producers: Andrea Vogt and Paul Russell

Country of Origin: South Africa + UK

Cocktail Reception