Applicant Qualifications

• Applicants must be of African nationality and the age of majority in their jurisdiction of primary residence.
• Applicants must be independent producers. This means that the individual applicants:
  1. own the copyright of their production;
  2. have artistic, budgetary, and editorial control of their project;
  3. are not regularly employed by a public or commercial broadcast entity.
• Applicant/co-applicant must have previous film or television production experience in a principal role (producer, co-producer, director, or co-director) as demonstrated by a sample DVD or videotape of completed work submitted with application.

Requirements

All projects entered into the Focus Features Africa First Short Film Program must meet the requirements below:

• Produced in continental Africa;
• 5-25 minutes in length with narratives taking place exclusively in Africa. Feature and/or documentary submissions will not be accepted;
• In preproduction, production, or postproduction;
• Project must be filmed in continental Africa and contribute to the development of the local film industry by using local key production staff and using local facilities;
• All Program documents must be written in the English language; however, if the original language of the screenplay was not in the English language, an English-language translation of the screenplay is acceptable;
• Project must be either (i) in the English language or (ii) if not, be delivered with English-language subtitles in 16mm, Super 16mm, 35mm, HDTV, DigiBeta, or Beta format.

Award Selection

The final selection of up to five (5) award recipients will be made by Completion Films and the Focus production team, with the final decision being made by Focus. Projects will be judged by taking into consideration such factors as originality, creativity, quality, and artistic contribution to African filmmaking.