South African media company STEPS returned from this years Berlinale International Film Festival with accolades, having bagged a special mention for the feature film No U-turn (Nigeria/SA/France) by Ike Nnaebue.
The film is one of two from their latest documentary project Generation Africa which were selected to play in the prestigious event.
The other Generation Africa film selected was No Simple Way Home by Akuol de Mabior which also was the first South Sudanese film selected in the history of the festival.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, documentary jury member Susanne Schüle said “We give the Special Mention to a film that sensitively gives voice to the people of Nigeria who are in a state of constant transit in their desperate search for a viable future. We rejoice with Ike Nnaebue and his team for No U-Turn“
No U-turn follows the Nigerian director, Ike Nnaebue as he takes a journey through West Africa to North Africa – crossing Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali and Morocco- in a quest to understand the motivations young people travelling to Europe through the back way. Nnaebue makes this journey 26 years after his own attempts to get to Europe the same way when he was young, which he abandoned on the way for fear of the dangers of the road. Along the road he connects with young people to find the answer to the question of why young people still travel this dangerous route even with the proliferation of images of black youth killed, robbed and enslaved in their attempts to cross the dessert while other drown in the sea crossing.
“When No U-Turn received an official selection from the Berlinale, I felt an encouraging pat on the back. Receiving a Special mention for my first documentary film felt like the documentary world swinging wide open its doors and welcoming me in heartily. All thanks to the amazing program that is Generation Africa. This is the generation of Africans that changes the narrative.” said Nnaebue.
No U-turn is a Nigeria, South Africa and France co-production, produced by Christilla Huillard-Kann for Elda Productions (France ), Don Edkins and Tiny Mungwe for STEPS (South Africa) and Okechukwu Omeire for Passion8 Productions (Nigeria). The film is produced in partnership with, among others, CNC & World Cinema Fund.
Generation Africa is one of 25 films from 16 African countries in the Generation Africa collection produced by STEPS in Cape Town. Generation Africa aims to shift the narrative on migration by giving voice to African filmmakers to tell stories about migration from an African perspective. “This project was initiated in response to the fact that when migration became an increasingly urgent topic in the global discourse, looking at the documentary films coming out to deal with it, it became clear that the African voice was missing. We could see this clearly through our pan-African documentary platform, Afridocs.net“ says STEPS director Don Edkins.
The Generation Africa project was the first of its kind bringing together filmmakers from English and French-speaking African countries to collaborate and also provided skills development through professional support with experts from development to production, post production and festival.
The Generation Africa project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation with the Deutsche Welle Akademie, Robert Bosch Foundation, Bertha Foundation. The project’s lead broadcaster is ARTE, the European Culture Channel with the participation.
