Yetu (Un)limited is positioning this as a historic infrastructure play—finally giving African producers the structured pathways to private equity and institutional capital they've been denied for decades.
Insiders know African cinema has long been treated as an afterthought by international financiers who don't understand continental markets. This platform essentially forces serious money to engage on terms that work for producers, not just Eurocentric gatekeepers.
The Nomadic Film Space launches May 14-15 at the Cannes Marché du Film with events including 'Producing the Future: Innovative Financing Models for African Cinemas.' Yanis Gaye, Yetu (Un)limited founder, stated: 'It is all the more crucial that we design infrastructures that allow serious investors to engage with these markets on their own terms.' The platform's pilot think tank was held in Salvador, Brazil in 2025.
This isn't charity—it's a calculated power move. By forcing international capital to understand African cinema on its own terms, Yetu (Un)limited is rewriting the power dynamics of global film financing. Watch who shows up to Cannes ready to play ball.
The Cannes Film Festival has always been theater, but this year there's a new production worth watching behind the scenes. Nomadic Film Space, a traveling market platform designed to connect African creative producers with fresh sources of financing, will launch May 14-15 during the Cannes Marché du Film—backed by heavy hitters including Afreximbank, Film Fund Luxembourg, and the French Institut Français. Curated and operated by pan-African film studio Yetu (Un)limited in partnership with Ctrl + Alt + Shift, Sanusi Development Studio and Kiasi, the initiative aims to fill what its founders describe as "a critical gap in the international film industry." The platform moves beyond conventional market encounters, creating a structured environment where African and diaspora creative producers engage directly with investors who understand the sector from development through distribution—without having to translate their business models into terms that make Western financiers comfortable.
Yanis Gaye, founder of Yetu (Un)limited, didn't mince words in explaining the vision. "African, Afro-diasporic and Global South film industries are an archipelago filled with cultural resonance," he said. "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 launch kicks off May 14 with a workshop titled "Producing the Future: Innovative Financing Models for African Cinemas," presented as part of the Marché du Film's Producers Network.
Moderated by Kiasi's Samuel Tebandeke, the session will explore Africa's film financing landscape through multiple lenses: Women in Film's content analysis framework and ecosystem mapping in Nigeria and Kenya, followed by panels featuring leaders from Docubox, Afreximbank, and the Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab. Also that day, organizers present a case study on Afreximbank's Canex Creations investment strategy within film and audiovisual—including project selection criteria, financing structures, and cross-territory partnership models—before closing with a networking cocktail for financiers and producers.
May 15 shifts focus to audience development at Hotel Canopy with the second edition of "The African and Diasporic Audience Development Think Tank," initiated by Yetu (Un)limited in 2025. The traveling think tank combines market research with co-creation of audience design methodologies for African cinema. Its pilot edition, held in Salvador, Brazil alongside the Mostra de Cinemas Africanos, generated case studies, qualitative frameworks, and an ongoing publication.
The Cannes session will showcase Brazil findings while setting strategy for a dedicated support platform aimed at growing revenue-generating audiences for African cinema globally. The sponsor list reads like a who's who of international film finance: Afreximbank, Film Fund Luxembourg, SACD (France, Belgium and Canada), Institut Français, SODEC, Téléfilm Canada, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles & Wallonie-Bruxelles-International, CNC, the Cannes Marché du Film Producers' Network, IEFTF, and Ambassade de France en Guinée. That breadth signals serious institutional buy-in—but whether it translates to actual capital flowing to African producers remains to be seen.
