email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

CANNES 2021 Marché du Film

Enrico Chiesa, Isabelle Fauvel and Dieudonné Alaka • Coordinators and experts, OuiCoprod

“Professionals now know where to find projects from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific that are credible and pre-financed”

by 

- CANNES 2021: The International Organisation of La Francophonie and the ACP (African States, Caribbean and Pacific Organisation) are launching the new OuiCoprod platform

Enrico Chiesa, Isabelle Fauvel and Dieudonné Alaka • Coordinators and experts, OuiCoprod

We met with Enrico Chiesa (International Organisation of La Francophonie - OIF), Isabelle Fauvel (Initiative Film) and Dieudonné Alaka (Yaounde Film Lab) to talk about OuiCoprod, the new platform for cinema professionals launched with the support of the European Union and the ACP (African States, Caribbean and Pacific Organisation).

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: You launched OuiCoprod this morning in Cannes, why this platform and who is it for?
Enrico Chiesa, Isabelle Fauvel and Dieudonné Alaka: African and Caribbean films and series have been piercing through in festivals and on platforms for the past 3 to 4 years. Many producers, agents, television channels, funds etc. are today looking for projects from these regions and don’t know where to find them. At Fonds Images de la Francophonie (the OIF fund), we receive 4 to 500 projects per year and OuiCoprod aims to offer to professionals from Europe, America and the Middle East a selection of its best projects from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. These are therefore projects that have gone through a strict selection process, and which aren’t coming empty handed because they’ve usually received financing from the OIF, the EU, the ACP and sometimes from their national funds.

They're all South-South co-productions accompanied in the context of Clap ACP, a programme from the OIF co-financed by the European Union, with support from the ACP countries organisation (Africa-Caribbean-Pacific).

What will we be able to find on OuiCoprod?
Some short films and features, some fiction series, some animation and documentaries, in development, in production and in post-production. Some committed films, some comedies, some crime movies and even science-fiction. All genres, all formats. Some popular films but also some auteurs with a very “film lab” profile. For a professional curious to know more, he or she can just sign up on OuiCoprod.org and access some basic artistic (notes from the director, the producer) and financial elements, then directly contact the delegated producer and they can then continue the discussion offline.

OuiCoprod is a platform editorialised by 3 recognised professional entities: Initiative Film (Isabelle Fauvel and Hakim Mao) for fiction, the Yaounde Film Lab for documentaries (Dieudonné Alaka and Eugénie Michel-Villette), and the Discop Africa market for series (Patrick Zuchowicki). They do upstream work with talents and producers to get the projects into shape and offer to potential partners the elements they need; and downstream work: advising producers, labs, funds, festivals, agents, televisions and platforms and directing them towards the project that could work for them.

Who are your partners?
Our natural partners are the other funds interested in what we still call the “films of the South” – funds such as the Fonsic (Ivory Coast), the ACM (CNC), the WCF (supported, like us, by the EU-ACP), as well as the funds and labs associated with the big festivals. Our first three partnerships are with the Fabrique Cinéma in Cannes, the Durban FilmMart in Durban and Final Cut in Venice. Upcoming are the Fespaco and three or four others that we will be meeting in Cannes. From each of these workshops, a project will come to be added to the 51 projects that we already have in our catalogue. OuiCoprod isn’t a showcase for the OIF, it is a service offered to market players who wish to invest in new directors from these regions where creativity is bubbling up now more than ever.

(To know more about the platform:
Press contact: ophelie.surelle@gmail.com
Professional contact in Cannes: Enrico Chiesa WhatsApp +33 607 157 307 / Pavillon Cinémas du Monde #104, Pavillon Africain #120)

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

See also

Privacy Policy