‘Mami Wata’ Director C.J. Obasi, ‘Khartoum’ Filmmaker Ibrahim Ahmad and More Take New Projects to Durban FilmMart’s Co-Production Forum

The 17th Durban FilmMart kicks off Oct. 9 with a stacked, four-day program of talks, panels, think tanks and conversations that will spotlight some of the challenges and opportunities for the African film and TV industries and set the agenda for the continent’s filmmakers for the year ahead.

A highlight of every edition is the influential DFM Pitch and Finance Forum, the continent’s top launching pad for films searching for financing and distribution. Since its inception 16 years ago, the co-production forum (alongside DFM platforms Talents Durban and Jumpstart) has been the catalyst for more than 100 films.

To celebrate that track record, this year’s DFM will open with a screening of Rwandan debutante Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s post-genocide drama “Ben’Imana,” which won the Caméra d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Durban FilmMart Institute director Magdalene Reddy says the film — a co-production forum alumnus — was selected to highlight the event’s outsized impact on the African filmmaking community.

“This was a DFM project. It was pitched at DFM two years ago, and they were able to win two awards at Cannes [including the FIPRESCI prize],” says Reddy. “For us, the celebration of hosting a screening at the market — which we’ve not done previously — is based on the fact that we want to show our local content in our local context.”

Other DFM alumni that have made a splash on the festival circuit include “Aisha Can’t Fly Away Anymore,” from Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mustafa, which premiered at Cannes’ Critics Week; “Goodbye Julia,” from Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani, which premiered in Un Certain Regard; “Mami Wata,” a Sundance prizewinner from Nigerian filmmaker C.J. Obasi; and “Carissa,” from South African directing duo Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs, which premiered in Venice’s Horizons strand.

This year’s forum features 35 projects that will be pitched to producers, financiers, sales agents, broadcasters, distributors and film funds from across Africa and the rest of the globe. The final tally includes eight animation projects, 10 fiction features, 10 documentary features and seven series, all in varying stages of development. Fourteen African nations are represented, while 28 of the 35 projects have women in key creative roles.

“Creating the right balance is important,” Reddy says. “For us, creating a balance means creating a balance between the regions of the continent, so that we are well-represented. Creating a balance between established and emerging filmmakers. Gender balance is also very important.”

She adds: “The other balance is to make sure that there’s arthouse and commercial projects.”

To that end, in addition to the Pitch and Finance Forum, this year’s DFM will include a showcase of five projects from the African Producers Accelerator, an initiative launched this year to help connect commercially viable African projects with potential investors. Highlights include “Borsel,” the latest from “Carissa” filmmakers Jacobs and Delmar, whose last feature, “Variations on a Theme,” won at Rotterdam in 2025; “Galatians,” from director Michael Omonua (“Juju Stories”) and producer Abba Makama (“The Lost Okoroshi”), of Nigeria’s Surreal16 Collective; “A Fantastic Tale,” from Kenya’s Vincho Nchogu, which follows on the heels of her Venice premiere “One Woman One Bra”; and “The Return,” a Ghana-U.S. co-production from Zoey Martinson, whose debut “The Fisherman” also bowed in Venice.

Partnerships with the Palestine Film Institute, Climate Story Labs and Habesha Creative will also give a boost to additional projects looking for partners.

As this year’s event gets set to begin, here are 10 DFM Pitch and Finance Forum projects we’ve got our eyes on:

Bitter Wine
Director: Pablo Pinedo Bóveda
Producers: Protagonist Studios, Everywhere Films

Basque filmmaker Bóveda (“Noma”) partners with South African producer David Franciscus — best known for Ryan Kruger’s reboot of the 1987 cult horror-comedy “Street Trash” — on this story of a firebrand trade unionist whose life in Spain is upended after a strike goes horribly wrong. Regrouping on her friends’ vineyard in South Africa, she soon feels a call to action as she realizes that their workers are being bitterly exploited.

Bóveda/Franciscus: “Bitter Wine” is the story of neo-slavery experienced by South African wine farm workers, revealed through Pablo’s work with disenfranchised communities for over 16 years. The perspective and agency of the protagonists shift, motivated by their desire for justice and reparations. Our film explores racism, labor exploitation, contemporary post-apartheid society, white savior complex, love and, of course, wine.

Fafi
Director: Dominique Jossie
Producer: Blended Films

An alumna of the Realness Netflix Episodic Lab and co-writer of the Showmax series “Breekpunt,” Jossie’s latest is a multi-generational crime mystery drama series that traces the parallel lives of two women navigating
the mysterious, illegal gambling world
of Fafi. Spanning four decades and set between Cape Town and Johannesburg, it charts the hopes, dreams and betrayals of Coloured and Chinese families in South Africa.

Jossie: “Fafi” was inspired by stories shared by my grandfather, who worked as a Fafi runner in the 1950s. I became fascinated by this hidden cross-cultural economy that sustained families excluded from formal systems of power. The show “Fafi” explores our untold histories that shape identity, belonging and the legacies we inherit.

Four Months and Ten Days
Director: Alyaa Musa
Producers: Tooma Production, My Way Studio, Black Balance

From the Sudanese producer of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection “The Dam” and Un Certain Regard prizewinner “Goodbye Julia” comes Musa’s feature directorial debut about a widow who refuses to mourn her late husband, leaving his restless ghost trapped with her at home. What unfolds is a tragicomic story of reconciliation, infused with magical realism and set against the backdrop of the Sudanese revolution.

Musa: When my father died, I witnessed my mother’s Idda: four months and 10 days that turned from a “prison” into a temple, honoring a sacred ritual. The story merges two realities: a nation seeking freedom after 30 years of oppression, and Azza seeking reconciliation after 30 years of an unhappy marriage, whilst sheltered to practice the radical act of rest and healing.

Hyena
Director: Mkamzee Mwatela
Producer: 8278A Film Studio

Nairobi-based writer-director Mwatela, whose credits include Netflix’s “Country Queen” and MTV’s “Shuga Mashariki,” brings her extensive TV experience to this 8 x 45’ series about a down-on-her-luck producer whose only shot at a second chance comes in the form of a trashy reality show. Determined to make something respectable and meaningful out of it, she instead realizes that she has to betray everything she believes in to succeed.

Mwatela: Invasive, restless, uncomfortable. The camera hovers, intrudes, and eavesdrops. It is aggressive and unstable. Surveillance is not just aesthetic; it is the psychological condition of the series. The camera has a pulse. Shots feel grabbed. Frames are imperfect, sometimes late, sometimes too close. The audience is complicit. There is no neutral gaze in [“Hyena”].

Juju Soccer
Director: C.J. Obasi
Producers: Fiery Film, Vortex Animation

Best known for his Sundance prizewinner “Mami Wata,” Obasi charts a new course with this animated series about a downtrodden youth soccer team that finds hope with the arrival of a sorcerer’s apprentice whose magic turns the squad into an unstoppable force. Fusing sport, African magic, mythology and underworld intrigue, “Juju Soccer” tells a story where every goal is a stake, not just for pride, but for survival.

Obasi: There is literally no show like “Juju Soccer.” It’s an ultra-cool, colorful, badass African animated series, and we are going to have a blast making it. We have something entirely new and fresh, while also being familiar, and using a genre spin that is richly authentic and inventive all at the same time. This is a show that elevates the culture of a people, a perspective we don’t get to see, without alienating those who are not from that culture.

Mieta
Director: Carla Fonseca Mokgata
Producers: Storyscope, Peripheria, Black Mic Mac

Set in 1980s South Africa, Mokgata’s third feature is told from the perspective of a 10-year-old girl, an orphaned laborer trapped in the unforgiving world of farm life who uses her imagination to escape. Backed by a powerhouse production trio, it’s a modern fairy tale about memory, land and the inheritance of violence.

Mokgata: The stories that shaped me were often carried rather than written; passed between generations, altered by memory, silence and survival. “Mieta” grew from those fragments, from a desire to give them a life of their own. Rooted in African ancestral spirituality, where the living and the dead share the same breath, “Mieta” is a fairy tale about the quiet, radical power of imagination when everything else has been taken away. It is for every child who imagined freedom before they knew its name.

Nerve
Creators: Renee van Reenen, Raffaella Delle Donne, Tshepo Moche

Written and created by a trio of independent co-creators whose credits include the Netflix animated series “Supa Team 4” and Disney+’s “Kizazi Moto” anthology series, “Nerve” is a genre-bending Afrofuturist anthology blending horror, folklore, science fiction, speculative fiction and the supernatural. The ten 8-10’ stand-alone episodes use cerebral, high-concept horror to tell stories about African women who triumph, overcome and subvert in surprising ways.

Van Reenen/Donne/Moche: As South African women who have lived through our own varied experiences of “horror,” we wanted to explore authentic stories and interpretations of what horror means to different women by featuring African and Diasporan voices across diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The anthology presents a unique opportunity to showcase talent still vastly underrepresented on screen and within the horror genre.

Smoke and Mirrors
Writer: Zoë Laband
Director: Jozua Malherbe
Producer: Luke Rous Productions

Veteran South African producer Luke Rous teams up with award-winning screenwriter Zoë Laband and director Jozua Malherbe on this pulsing, 6 x 50’ crime drama series that gets set into motion when the grave of a South African crypto-king is discovered empty in Brazil. Spanning two continents, the show — based on an incredible true story — delves into what happens when what begins as a simple con turns into one of the largest cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes in history.

Malherbe/Rous/Laband: We’ve all been scammed. The feeling of broken trust is something that binds us. But when you lose as much money as [AI-powered Bitcoin trading platform] MTI stole, you almost have to admire the audacity. “Smoke & Mirrors”is our ode to the East Rand boytjies who aimed for the Moon, hit the stars and burnt out across the financial firmament.

Sunday Morning
Director: Minasie Terefe
Producer: Behagerlij Studio

Scooping both the Disney Television Animation Prize and the AGrAF Prize at Annecy’s MIFA Pitches this year, this animated series aimed at preschoolers follows four irrepressible kids whose determination to sing and play their way through the day is thwarted by a sleepy parent who just wants a few more hours of peace. A colorful cast of animal playmates adds to the fun and mayhem in their lively Ethiopian household.

Terefe: We believe the most local stories often travel the furthest. “Sunday Morning” comes from our childhood Sundays, a familiar rhythm in many Ethiopian families where children chase moments of play while parents hope for moments of peace. Through visual storytelling, humor and music, we want to share a story rooted in Ethiopia yet shaped by emotions that families everywhere can relate to.

Where Do I Belong?
Director: Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmad
Producer: Sudan Film Factory, In Deep Visions

From prolific Sudanese producer Talal Afifi and the filmmaking team behind the urgent, Sundance-premiering documentary “Khartoum” comes a companion piece that picks up the thread in Nairobi’s Sudanese diaspora community. There, director “Snoopy” Ahmad decides to return to his family in Khartoum, combining documentary footage and hand-drawn pencil animation to tell an intimate and unconventional road movie.

Afifi/Ahmad: This film begins inside Ibrahim’s own family: the parents who crossed borders to protect him are now separated from him by Sudan’s war. We are making it as an act of care and responsibility, connecting one family’s unfinished journey to wider African histories of migration and conditional belonging, without surrendering their intimacy or agency.