Google’s AI filmmaking programme for African creators closes on Saturday, November 15. Six days later, on November 21, the African AI Film Festival holds its awards night in Hollywood, and on December 12 it screens in Kampala.
Almost no one is charging African filmmakers to take part. That is good news, and it is also the question. When the entry is free, something else is the price. Here is who runs the circuit, what each one asks of you, and what to check before you apply.
The circuit, from Madagascar to Dubai
The map is wider than it looks.
The biggest programme is From Script to Screen with AI, backed by US$1 million from Google.org and run with Idris Elba’s Akuna Group, with Curious Refuge, a private AI education platform, delivering the training. It is open to people living in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa.
The African AI Film Festival is organised by the African AI Arts & Culture Institute, a California nonprofit, with screenings in Hollywood and Kampala. AI Film Festival Africa, listed in Antananarivo, Madagascar, has its event on November 28.
Earlier this year, the AI Cinema Festival Cairo ran from September 18 to 20 at the Hilton Cairo Nile Maadi, open worldwide to fully AI or hybrid work. Africa AI Creativity Week in Marrakech ran on April 7 to 9, alongside GITEX Africa. In Lagos, the Naija AI Film Festival began in September 2025 and drew nearly 500 submissions from Nigeria, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon. Next March, Expo City Dubai hosts an AI film festival, with a final deadline of January 21, 2027 and a festival date of March 18.
Those are seven places with seven different organisers, and the terms are not the same.
Google and Akuna: the biggest offer, with one open line
The programme is generous on paper. There is no application fee and no tuition. A twelve-week academy runs from January 25 to April 18, 2027, online with some in-person sessions. Everyone learns a shared AI filmmaking foundation, then specialises in fiction, documentary, animation, advertising or screenwriting. Graduates can submit a one-page project idea, and shortlisted ideas move to mentorship and pitching between April and July. Funded teams keep producing until October 2027. Offers go out on December 14.
On ownership, Akuna’s FAQ is direct: creators keep the intellectual property, or ownership rights, in their work. Selection also leans toward people over polish. Akuna says it judges “authenticity and passion, not production quality,” and a phone-recorded introduction is acceptable.
Two things are not yet settled. Funded projects must sign an agreement before any money is paid, and the FAQ does not say how many projects will be funded or how much each will receive. It also still contained bracketed wording about a distribution window on Google platforms. Bracketed text in a draft usually means the term is not final. If you apply, ask what screening or distribution rights the agreement would require, and get the answer in writing.
None of this is a warning against applying. It is a reminder that “you keep the IP” and “you may only release it after a window on our platform” can both be true at once.
The African AI Film Festival: who runs it matters
This festival is run by a nonprofit, and its founder, Patrick Sekyaya, is a Los Angeles filmmaker who in 2025 also founded ViralHQ.ai, an AI video studio focused on commercial production. That is not a conflict by itself. It is context. A festival that gathers AI films by African creators, run by someone who sells AI video, has a business reason to care about what gets made.
The terms we could verify are reasonable. Entry is free for Africa-based filmmakers and for students and emerging entrants. Films qualify through African heritage, an African story or setting, African languages, or collaboration with African creators. Entrants must disclose the AI tools they used, and filmmakers must hold the rights to their own work. Nonconsensual likenesses and deceptive deepfakes are prohibited.
The rewards need reading with care. A contest listing says winners receive Runway and Adobe credits, along with trophies, laurels, mentor access and the two premiere screenings. The festival’s own release, by contrast, describes nine awards and does not mention credits. The listing is a third-party site, so treat the credits as likely but confirm them. If they are real, the prize is software credit that only works inside a vendor’s tools, which builds loyalty to the tool.
Sekyaya framed the aim this way: “AI is shattering the financial barriers of Hollywood, but we have to ensure it doesn’t build new geographic ones.” It is a good line, and it is a useful test. A Hollywood awards night followed by a Kampala screening does put the geography in the programme. Whether it is built the right way round is a question for the filmmakers who attend.
AI Film Festival Africa: the clearest rule
The Madagascar festival has the plainest condition we found. Films must be public on YouTube, with #SpecialForLeCinema and @lecinemafilms in the description, and they must stay public until the festival ends. Private and unlisted links are rejected. The festival is presented by Henrie Studio under the name LeCinema.
That is a fair trade for a free entry, but it is also a trade. A film that must be fully public before the festival cannot be held back for a sales window, a broadcaster, or a bigger festival with a premiere rule. For a short, that may not matter. For a first feature, it might.
What creators actually hand over
Across the circuit, four things change hands.
Rights. Most listings say little. The African AI Film Festival’s page contains no licence language, and the Expo Dubai page says to check the official rules. If a rule is not written down where you can read it, ask before you submit.
Exposure terms. Public posting, premiere restrictions, distribution windows and promotional use all sit here. Another festival on the same circuit, in Tel Aviv, lets selected films be used in promotion for 24 months and pays no screening fees. Those are the kinds of lines to look for.
Tool loyalty. Credits as prizes, and training built on one platform, steer people toward particular tools. That is not sinister, but it shapes what “African AI cinema” is made with.
Data. We found no public statement about how submitted films or training materials may be used by the tool makers or organisers. That absence is the point. It is a question to put to every organiser.
There is a creative cost too. In a February report by TheWrap, the Nigerian filmmaker Malik Afegbua said AI models lacked accurate depictions of people of African descent and defaulted to stereotypes, and he began building his own African model from cultural data he collected. Alexandre Michelin of the Knowledge Immersive Forum said the models fail to capture differences between places such as South Africa and Senegal. If the tools are trained elsewhere, the festivals that train people to use them are also training a look.
The audience is already there
Creators are not waiting for permission. A 2024 survey by DLA Piper Africa of Nigerian film and television professionals found that 35 percent already use generative AI tools, and another 35 percent were considering it. Pew Research found in October 2025 that Nigerians are more excited about AI (20 percent) than Americans (10 percent), and less concerned (24 percent against 50 percent).
Where adoption is this fast, the terms people sign in their first festival or programme will become the habits of the industry.
Three questions before you apply
Ask these of any festival or programme, in this order.
Who owns the output? Not “do I keep the IP” in general, but what the agreement says about the finished film, the training material, and anything made with the organiser’s tools.
What rights does the organiser get? Public posting, promotional use, stills, trailers, a screening window, and for how long.
Does the funding agreement allow distribution on the funder’s own platforms? And if so, on what terms, for how long, and who earns from it?
The festivals deserve credit for opening the door. A creator who walks through it with the answers is in a better position than one who finds out later.
Written by Layo
Lead Editorial Writer, Creative Brief Africa
Outside of her editorial work, she writes Curious Health, a newsletter focused on everyday health questions, explored with clarity and care.