African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
CameroonCulture
Home›African Arguments›Country›Central›Cameroon›Cameroon has finally made its Netflix debut. It’s been a long time coming.

Cameroon has finally made its Netflix debut. It’s been a long time coming.

By Erwin Ayota
November 23, 2021
1121
0
There are now four Cameroonian films available on Netflix.

The Anglophone film industry has overcome many odds to reach a global audience. 

There are now four Cameroonian films available on Netflix.

There are now four Cameroonian films available on Netflix.

In early 2021, Anglophone Cameroonian filmmakers made a momentous debut as four films were made available on the global streaming behemoth Netflix. With unprecedented ease, viewers from across the globe could suddenly watch uniquely Cameroonian stories that were once the preserve of only local audiences.

In The Fisherman’s Diary, they could share in the journey of 12-year-old Ekah striving to go to school in a culture where girls’ education is considered taboo. They could appreciate the fluid bilingual dialogue in Therapy where an affluent couple confronted postpartum depression. In Broken, viewers followed Sassy’s daring mission to rescue her father’s company in Douala with Endeley, a complete stranger from a village in the South-West region. And in the enthralling romcom A Man for The Weekend, they could get lost in the travails of the beautiful, successful protagonist dealing with her demanding mother’s pressure to find a husband and start a family. 

For Anglophone filmmakers in Cameroon, this walk to this global recognition has been long and tricky. They have faced not just typical challenges around issues such as funding and support but a complicated national context in trying to get their films aired and recognised.

Before 1990, Cameroon’s media was exclusively state-run and mostly showed Francophone films. And since private media ownership was permitted in 2000, newer stations predominantly aired foreign content such as Latino soap operas and Hollywood films. These channels have been reluctant to broadcast Cameroonian films and, according to some insiders, demanded payment from filmmakers to screen their films as they would consider this publicity.

The Anglophone crisis, in which protests against perceived marginalisation in 2016 quickly escalated into a full-blown conflict, only made the situation more difficult, both logistically and in terms of attracting funding.

“If you had to do a movie in Batibo or Bali because you need a specific topography, plot and other setups in the story you want to tell to make it believable, nobody will accept to go…because it’s a risk zone,” filmmaker Nkanya Nkwai told African Arguments.

“It is difficult for anyone to put in money in any such project when they know that the atmosphere is not conducive,” he adds. 

In the face of these headwinds, Anglophone filmmakers persevered. Some have strived. 

One way in which they have done this is through collaboration with Nigeria’s Nollywood and Ghana’s Ghallywood whose stars are widely known in Cameroon. 

All four films that Netflix picked up feature some of West Africa’s biggest stars: Richard Mofe-Damijo and Iretiola Doyle in Therapy; Ramsey Nouah in The Fisherman’s Diary; Alex Ekubo in A Man for The Weekend; John Dumelo in Broken. This has helped the films attract a wider audience and immediate recognition.

Funding remains a challenge, but some hope Netflix could be part of the solution. 

According to film critic Kwoh Elonge, the industry may enjoy the global reach its films get through the global platform, but “Netflix is more of a strategy for filmmakers to, first of all, make money out of their films.” 

Making money from movies can be tough. 

The shutting down of cinemas has stymied revenue from ticket sales and income from selling films to airlines or uploading them to YouTube is uncertain. But now, many hope that streaming platforms will both offer a new source of income and make future films more attractive to potential investors. 

Netflix is the biggest of these platforms but far from the only one. MTN’s Yabadoo is gaining in popularity. The South African-based Multichoice recently started airing more Cameroonian films. And Amazon Prime acquired the Cameroonian movie Saving Mbango in 2020. 

For this reason, filmmaker Itambi Delphine is more excited about what Cameroon’s Netflix debut means for the industry going forwards than what it says about where it has reached thus far. 

“[This development] gives room for competition in the industry as more filmmakers will be motivated to make movies of a certain quality to meet up with the film competition in the world,” she says.

“If you have consistent high productions…from different production houses…it’s not just Netflix that the industry will be open to.”


 

 

Previous Article

What is the legacy of #EndSARS?

Next Article

From ethnic amnesia to ethnocracy: 80% of ...

mm

Erwin Ayota

Erwin Ayota is a writer and freelance journalist with interest in sports, pop culture and photography. He lives in Limbe, Cameroon and has written for FabAfriq Magazine, Invest in Limbe, Better Breed Cameroon.

0 comments

  1. Paul-Simon Handy 25 November, 2021 at 06:44

    Excellent piece that doesn’t fall into the usual clichés around the crisis in the NoSo.

    Congrats for that

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • africans in china after the pandemic
    Covid-19Society

    African migration to China may never be the same again

  • Politics

    Human Rights Reporting on Darfur: A Genre that Redefines Tragedy (2)

  • Politics

    Congo: UK and US must play more consistent hand to end world’s worst war – By Richard Dowden

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • The unaccountability of Liberia’s polluting miners
  • Africa Elections 2023: All the upcoming votes
  • “Poking the Leopard’s Anus”: Legal Spectacle and Queer Feminist Politics
  • Introducing Parselelo and a new climate focus
  • The ‘Hustler’ Fund: Kenya’s Approach to National Transformation

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksPoliticsUganda

“Give us back our people”: the Ugandans who disappeared

Senior officials claim not to know the whereabouts of individuals arrested nearly two years ago, as state abductions continue. On 23 August, Moses Bukenya got his freedom from Kitalya prison, ...
  • Ella Baker addressing a convention in 1964.

    Thinking radically in Africa must start with political education

    By Nanjala Nyabola
    October 12, 2021
  • Africa covid vaccine rollout map

    Covid-19 vaccine rollout in Africa tracker: An interactive map

    By Catherine Kyobutungi
    September 29, 2021
  • Sudan Middle East influence

    Cash and contradictions: On the limits of Middle Eastern influence in Sudan

    By Alex de Waal
    August 1, 2019
  • Egypt’s sexual revolutionaries tackling the tyranny within

    By Mona Eltahawy
    October 20, 2021

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu