Meet the Nomadic Film Space! The new “traveling market platform” designed to “bridge African creative producers with institutional capital” has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival‘s Marché du Film.
It is designed to “fill a critical gap in the international film industry,” moving “beyond conventional market encounters to create a structured environment where African cinema’s most entrepreneurial producers engage with investors who understand the sector on its own terms, from development and production through to distribution, curation, and audience building,” its creators said.
Curated and operated by Yetu (Un)limited in partnership with Ctrl + Alt + Shift, Sanusi Development Studio and Kiasi, the platform arrived at Cannes with a series of curated events, such as Friday morning’s “The African & Diasporic Audience Development Think Tank.”
Sponsors and partners of the Nomadic Film Space include Afreximbank, Film Fund Luxembourg, SACD (France, Belgium & Canada), Institut Français, SODEC, Téléfilm Canada, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles & Wallonie-Bruxelles-International, CNC, Cannes Marché du Film Producers Network, IEFTF and Ambassade de France en Guinée.
“African, Afro-diasporic and Global South film industries are an archipelago filled with cultural resonance,” said Yanis Gaye, founder of Yetu (Un)limited. “In the ever-changing landscape of the international film industry, it is all the more crucial that we design infrastructures that allow serious investors to engage with these markets on their own terms — understanding how they operate, what success means within their specific contexts, and where strategic capital can generate sustainable prosperity.”
The Cannes Film Festival has built a reputation as a discovery platform for African cinema, and its 2026 edition showcases several works from African auteurs, both established and new voices. As THR has highlighted, the films include a star-studded movie by Nigerian-born twins (Clarissa), the first film by a Rwandan director in the Official Selection (Ben’Imana), a landmark co-production (Congo Boy) and the latest from a Moroccan auteur (Strawberries).
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