On October 23, 2025, a new film market will open in Lagos, Nigeria, one of the busiest media production zones on the African continent. Known globally for its high output but limited formal infrastructure, Lagos anchors Nollywood’s production economy, with concentrated labor activity and most of the country’s theatrical screens. Despite its local and pan-African positioning, Lagos—like most major commercial film hubs globally—has no dedicated marketplace for short films. The African International Short Film Market (AISFM) is stepping in to change that, not just for the city or the country, but for the continent.
It is being developed by a small cross-national team—Gbenga Adeoti (Nigeria), Kagabo Nkubiri (Rwanda), and Theodore Ishimwe (Rwanda)—who met in 2024 while participating in the Moving Pictures Incubator, a Some Fine Day Pix-run program funded by GIZ—Germany’s international development agency—focused on distribution strategy across African screen sectors.
The Incubator brought together participants from across the continent and beyond—professionals based not only in Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya, but also in Europe and North America. AISFM (and the African Film Press alliance Akoroko is a part of) emerged from that context.
Set to run from October 23 to 25, 2025, across three venues in Lagos, the Market is designed not just to screen African short films, but to treat them as commercial works with value in themselves: pitchable, programmable, licensable.
“This isn’t a pilot. It’s a working model. We’re testing it with real films, real people, and real decisions,” Adeoti said in a recent conversation with Akoroko, adding, “If a short film is where filmmakers start, then why is that the place where we provide the least support?”
Short films are made across the continent at high volume—in schools, in labs, on personal budgets—but they are rarely picked up for distribution in any format or tracked. Festivals may program them, but few acquire rights. YouTube is often the final destination. National institutions rarely intervene. And where feature-length projects are at least sometimes treated as investment-grade products, shorts are still largely considered personal exercises or calling cards. AISFM wants to embed them into an actual transactional structure.
Adeoti began as a stage actor in Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria, working in church and theatre productions as well as local media before earning a professional degree in Theatre and Film. He later enrolled at EbonyLife Creative Academy, a Lagos-based film and television training institution, which expanded his knowledge and gave him access to new networks—but it didn’t resolve the larger issue he kept encountering, one that would eventually lead to the creation of Film Joint.
“After film school, I collaborated with a few colleagues and made three short films,” he said. “We spent a lot of money, and then it dawned on me that I can’t keep making short films and not get any tangible return. After YouTube or a few festivals, that’s it.”
In 2022, Adeoti launched Film Joint, a short film screening and distribution platform focused on curated exhibition and structured access for short films. Its first public event took place in June 2023 at EbonyLife Cinemas. The program featured five short films—one Nigerian and four international—with the intention of elevating the value of short films, increasing visibility, and building a long-term market for them.
“There are platforms that showcase short films, but they don’t necessarily treat them as marketable works,” he said. “No award show. No market. No real infrastructure.” Film Joint was built to create that value for short films.
Nkubiri began working with short films as a practical choice. Based in Kigali, Rwanda, he started writing scripts as a high school student, at a time when feature production in Rwanda was financially and logistically out of reach. “I tried to sell one of my early scripts in 2014,” he said. “But people just said, ‘Who buys scripts?’ That was the end of that.”
His first short was stolen—literally. A hard drive containing the only copy was taken, and the film was never recovered. After that, he moved between Zambia and Rwanda, doing contract video work and collaborating with MultiChoice trainees—participants in a pan-African media training program run by the continent’s largest pay-TV broadcaster—on shorts with borrowed gear.
In 2020, he returned to Rwanda and started producing short documentaries and videos for the Ministry of Commerce. That body of work—over 150 short-form commissions—became his informal film school.
By the time the Moving Pictures Incubator opened its call for projects in 2024, Nkubiri had a feature in post-production but no access to finishing funds, minimum guarantees, or platform leads. “I kept asking people, other filmmakers, how to sell or finish a film. No one had real answers,” he said. The incubator was an opportunity just to gain clarity on what distribution even looked like.
Participants from Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, and Germany were expected to pitch new approaches to audience access, monetization, and circulation. Adeoti applied to expand Film Joint into something bigger. Kagabo joined without a project in mind. When the two met, the overlap was immediate.
“I saw what Gbenga was trying to do, and I realized this wasn’t just about Nigeria,” Nkubiri said. “We could do this continent-wide. I had shorts I was about to send to festivals, but it was clear festivals weren’t going to solve anything. Visibility, access, business structure are what we needed.”
The third co-founder, Theodore Ishimwe, also from Rwanda, was not present in the conversation that forms the primary source for this reporting, but his contribution is foundational. A digital strategist and streaming entrepreneur, Ishimwe leads Cinetie, a Kigali‑based SVOD platform focused on Afro‑centric film and TV content. Adeoti noted that Ishimwe’s input during development contributed to the physical short film market idea he (Adeoti) initially pitched evolving into a hybrid format with a digital component.
By the time the team reached the final pitch in Nairobi, their project had evolved well beyond its original scope. They were named one of three winners alongside African Film Press (AFP) and The Screen Connect, another Pan‑African initiative led by Cassandra Onwualu (Nigeria), Selvin Marete (Kenya), and Mizero Kabano Yannick (Rwanda)—each receiving a €20,000 grant to begin implementation. An Akoroko profile of the latter group is in development as well.
AISFM’s first edition will take place October 23–25, 2025. The current plan, prepared by project manager Dawn Ntekim-Rex, outlines a structured, three-day rollout (subject to change, with more details closer to launch):
- Day 1 (Co-Creation Hub in Lekki): keynote by a leading African director, speed networking, and a curated short film party.
- Day 2 (at EbonyLife Cinemas): masterclasses on directing, cinematography, writing for shorts, and festival strategy; one-on-one meetings between filmmakers and distributors.
- Day 3 (The Zone, Gbagada): a live pitch forum for short films in development, a €3,000 prize, a demo of the virtual platform using a simulated acquisition transaction, a fireside chat with a high-profile figure, and a closing night party.
The market will also include breakout rooms for film feedback, dedicated tables for country-specific delegations, and an exhibition area for regional platforms and buyers. Online participation will be built into the structure. “Most people who attend this first edition in person will be Nigerian,” Gbenga acknowledged. “We know that. Travel is expensive. Getting visas to enter Nigeria can be complicated. But we want participation from filmmakers across the continent, and the virtual platform will allow that.”
AISFM is not attempting to centralize short film circulation. The team is already planning to rotate the physical event, with Rwanda likely for 2026. “We’re not building a headquarters,” Nkubiri said. “We’re building a working model that is nimble and can move.”
The larger stakes are infrastructural. While some national agencies have supported short-form training and labs, there is no consistent funding, acquisition, or licensing framework for shorts in most countries, and certainly even less common across Africa. Festival play rarely leads to securing exhibition rights. Streamers deprioritize them unless commissioned directly or licensed from curated, externally funded programs, or are celebrity-driven. Platforms with commissioning budgets overwhelmingly focus on features or series. AISFM is asking what would happen if shorts were also treated just as bankable.
In global markets, the most widely circulated short films tend to fall into genre or animation categories, which tend to travel easily across platforms and audiences. As in Africa, many acclaimed festival shorts globally do not go on to secure licensing deals unless linked to recognizable names. However, AISFM is not built around name recognition; it’s structured for completed films that need a pathway into curated, rights-based circulation, regardless of who made them.
The founders are also not replicating the model of publicly funded European short film platforms, like France’s Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market. AISFM is a tailored response to an ecosystem where short films are widely made and shown, but rarely treated as works with long-term market value.
“We’re not trying to do what Clermont or Cannes are doing,” Adeoti said. “They have their systems. But those systems aren’t built for us, or for the kinds of films being made here.” It’s setting up a different frame entirely: one where short films are organized for transaction within African-run contexts. The question is, who builds the infrastructure to prove it?
AISFM isn’t theoretical. It’s being constructed by filmmakers who have already completed work, faced distribution roadblocks, and decided to structure a solution themselves. “After the premiere, there’s silence, and that silence isn’t creative. It’s just where everything stops,” Nkubiri said.
“We’re not waiting for a government grant to make this work,” Adeoti added. “If someone wants to join, they can. But we’re already moving.”
And that means organizing what already exists: the films, the conditions, and the commercial logic that has gone unstructured for too long.
The goal is functionality. And AISFM is infrastructure.