The founders of Women in Film Guild Botswana, Serena Serene Mmifinyana and Nikita Neo Mokgware are currently attending a screenwriting program by The Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa (ICAPA) Trust in Lagos, Nigeria.
The workshop is a training program in story-telling for the screen aimed at African women screenwriters who have a compelling project in late development. This program is partly funded by The Hawthorne Foundation, and facilitated by DFK Films, a screenwriting consultancy company run by Gabriele Sindler and Donat Keusch who are one of Europe’s leading script analysts. Tsitsi Dangarembga is the founder of ICAPA Trust and one of the pioneers of black women’s filmmaking on the continent. Industry practitioners on the African continent often short-change story development due to a lack of funding and education opportunities for the process. Yet, script development is arguably the most important part of motion picture development.
ICAPA Trust expects several films from this year’s workshop to proceed to production, as the Trust is setting up a special vehicle for productions that come out of its training activities. Ms Mmifinyana and Ms Mokgware are very confident that their project will be one of the successes to be recognized. Their project, Dimo in the Sky, is the only animation project in the program. This is the same project that was chosen to be pitched at Pavillion Afriques at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and has garnered much attention and interest from producers and stakeholders both in and out of the continent. Ms. Mmifinyana and Ms. Mokgware are both very grateful for this program, as it is enabling them to improve on their story-building to lock in a film that will resonate with an international audience. All of this can further improve the quality of their films, and take back their knowledge to help improve the quality of films in Botswana.