The celebrated Nigerian Filmmaker and CEO of FAD Media Group, Fidelis Duker, has been appointed alongside other eminent African filmmakers as jury for the final 10 African Female Filmmakers, who will be joining the acclaimed film director and Cannes Film Festival winner, Naomi Kawase, in the beautiful village of Tawara, surrounding the spectacular city of Nara, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Japan for a unique opportunity to work, discover, exchange, create ideas around film making.

It will be recall that the residency initiative was a fall out of one of the presentation at the JAPAN/AFRICA summit where Duker was a speaker from Nigeria.

The residency has funding from the Government of Japan, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in partnership with the Nara International Film Festival who will be Organizing the 2 week film making residency (29 March to 12 April 2020) for 10 young African women filmmakers from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa.

The core objective of this transnational workshop is to facilitate exchange, to share experience, and to create a productive working environment for women filmmakers. It also aims to offer artistic guidance and to put in place a genuine platform for experimental creation.

It will foster artistic renewal for artists and writers by giving them access to a new and stimulating cultural environment, contribute to the formation of durable ties between artists from Africa and Japan, promote the work and career development of female artists internationally, develop new networks for artistic creation, production and dissemination.

According to the grateful Duker, this was an honour he is really excited about.

“I feel honoured and excited that I was found worthy to be chosen amongst some of Africa’s best as a member of the evaluation/selection committee,” he said.

The selection committee is saddled with the responsibility of choosing the 10 finalists from the over 500 applications received from of some of the Africa’s outstanding female filmmakers.

He said, “The quality of application was very high, however, the committee has to select the best amongst best for the residency.”

Mr. Fidelis Duker, who has a robust profile in the media and movie industries, is also the founder of Abuja International Film Festival, which is the longest running film festival in anglophone West Africa. The festival is in its 17th edition.

The other members of the Evaluation/Selection committee include Ardouma Soma, Director General of Fespaco from Burkina Faso, Timothy Owase, Chief Executive Officer, Kenya Film Commission, Hugues Diaz, Director of cinematography, Ministry of Culture from Senegal and Makhosazana Khanyile, CEO, National Film & Video Foundation of South Africa.

According to a statement from UNESCO, filmmaker Naomi Kawase and the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, will be together at UNESCO HQ (Paris) on 13th February 2020 announce the results of the selection committee during the Intergovernmental Committee of the 2005 Convention on the promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.

Also in attendance will be UNESCO Ambassadors from the 5 selected African countries.