Realness Institute

Our mission is to unearth the wealth of African stories – stories from the continent, told with an honest and unapologetic point of view by African filmmakers. Our first programe, the Realness Residency, which started in 2015, has gone on to launch 30 film projects across 16 African countries in only five years. The critical success of brave films such as The Wound, Rafiki, Akasha, I Am Not A Witch, Difret and This is Not a Burial It’s a Resurrection are a testament to the artistic and creative contribution that African filmmakers can make to the industry. In 2019, we launched our second programme, Creative Producer Indaba. This ambitious initiative has been designed, in collaboration with international partners, to catalyse Producers across the continent, and in doing so help transform the landscape of African and international independent cinema by training them to become ecosystem builders. In June 2020, we launched our third and fourth programmes, Episodic Lab and Development Executive Traineeship (DET) in partnership with Netflix and in 2021 we started our fifth program, the Souther Africa Locarno Industry Academy that is focused on the marketing, sales, and distribution side of the business. In 2022 we launched our sixth program, Authentic Africa which is our first 54-country episodic call. If your are interested in learning more please visit: realness.institute