The MultiChoice Talent Factory Academy (popularly called MTF by its participants) was created at a time in the African film industry when African veteran filmmakers needed to pass the baton of storytelling to a new generation. In establishing MTF, the MultiChoice team aimed to attract, develop and train young and emerging African filmmakers. So, in May 2018, with the intention of selecting 20 students each across three African regions, West, South and East Africa, a call for applications was announced.
That first application saw an enormous 3,108 entries from 13 African countries: Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Eswatini and Angola. This enthusiastic response, as far back as 2018, highlighted the heightened interest of young Africans in storytelling and filmmaking despite structural and infrastructure hurdles. The fact that the Academy selected only 60 students out of over 3,000 applicants highlights the pressing need for more film schools in Africa.
Yet, undeterred by these limiting structural hurdles, the Academy has, for close to a decade, made an indelible mark on the African film landscape. Its one-year-long immersive and rigorous training, as described by past participants, has nurtured the storytelling insights of young African filmmakers, especially those from Nigeria, and has provided a fertile ground for the germination of regional capacity.
In the words of Femi Odugbemi, West Africa Academy Director, MultiChoice Talent Factory Academy isn’t just about giving back. “It’s about the shared value of not just providing employment but ensuring that generations are armed and equipped.” As a 12-month programme, MTF provides its participants with theoretical and practical training sessions in cinematography, editing, audio production and storytelling.
Fully funded, participants aren’t burdened with paying exorbitant fees or worrying about accommodation and stipends. These incentives are likely the organisers’ way of creating a relaxed and convenient environment and headspace for participants to thrive. As Myde Glover, one of the 2024 participants, tells me, the funding afforded him the freedom to fully commit to the Academy without fixating on financial distractions. “It makes you present. You’re really able to learn and be creative because there’s no worry as regards that,” he says.
Hope Eniayekan, a 2021 fellow, shares Glover’s sentiments. The fully-funded structure afforded her the opportunity to dedicate herself entirely to film for a whole year. “Quitting my job at the time was a big risk, but having the ‘funding’ helped cushion the blowback of that to some degree,” she tells me.
Curious about the inner workings of the Academy, I spoke with Precious Iroagalachi, an alumnus, who graciously provided me with answers. For West African participants, classroom learning takes place at Pan-Atlantic University and on the Academy’s grounds in Lagos, Nigeria. These sessions are facilitated by both local and international film experts and lecturers.
To ensure participants gain practical knowledge, the programme includes hands-on production training across various departments. From shows like Tinsel, Battleground, Brethren, The Johnsons, and Apache, students are encouraged to shadow directors, producers, and HODs, gaining firsthand experience on professional sets.
Beyond this, students also train with SuperSports and Outside Broadcasting Services (OBS), taking part in major live events such as The Experience and Unusual Praise as visual mixers and camera operators under the watchful eyes and guiding hands of the OBS crew. More recently, students have also worked on the production of African Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) too.
Undoubtedly, the Academy has launched the careers of a number of filmmakers in the Nigerian film industry, including Orire Nwani, Allen Oyinge, Adeniyi ‘TAJ’ Joseph, Joshua Tsotso and other names which I will mention subsequently. Beyond technical training, the academy has provided these young filmmakers with an enabling environment to network and collaborate.
This collaborative spirit is fully on display in the yearly MultiChoice’s commissioned projects. As part of its programme, MultiChoice commissions two projects per set. These projects, creatively and independently directed by the students, as past alumni have told me, offer a unique opportunity to put into practice all they’ve been taught while working together to produce a film.
Some of those projects include Dreamchaser, Life of Bim, Savannah Skies, The Painting, Ensulo, Promises, Leaked, Revisit, Somewhere in Kole, A Quiet Intruder, Cheza, Revisit, Stinger, Strings, Full Time Husband, The 11th Commandment, Mfumukazi, Her Dark Past, Grown, Gone, Everything Light Touches, The Immersive Alarm, Deadbeat, Mwananga, and Rivals in Time.
As writers, directors, editors and cinematographers, the students learn the rigours of working with established actors. The films written, produced and directed by the participants of the MultiChoice Training Academy projects can provide us with a casual glimpse into the future of the Nigerian film industry. Watching and reviewing films made by the MTF graduates serves as a fruitful effort to assess the filmmakers’ attention to craft, storytelling and their point of uniqueness.
To assess, as a critic, the impact of the year-long training on the students and how it has impacted their storytelling and artistic strength and skills, I watched four films made by the MTF students. Two of those films, Everything Light Touches and Gone, which originally had their premiere on Africa Magic before heading to Showmax in March, have secured an African Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) nomination spot in the 2025 Best Multichoice Talent Factory Movie category. The other two films, Grown and Her Dark Past, also had an AMVCA nomination, with Her Dark Past winning the category in 2024.
Watching through these four films, I couldn’t help but notice how the writing and directing are deeply and painfully soulless. The films are interestingly addressing societal issues – sexual and domestic assault, empathy towards children with special needs and unguided fascination with adulthood. As a concept, these stories had the potential to be cinematically immersive and mentally impactful. However, at the end of the films, the supposed didactic lessons it aimed to hand out to viewers get lost in shallow writing and direction. There is a porridge-like response to the social issues the scripts are supposed to address.
Produced by a congregation of first-time filmmakers, it’s confounding not to see their hunger to make cultural, artistic and logical statements with their films. It’s not enough to “address” societal issues when the films don’t have a unique perspective on the subject matter. “Where are the directorial insights or thoughts that can be drawn?” I asked myself while watching the films. Judging that I am watching these films within the context of their MTF affiliation, I wanted to connect what must have inspired the inertia that can be found in the films.
As one of the alumni told me, the films are independently made by the students with “limited creative input” from MTF itself. In the alumni’s words, “they do check-ins. But the students have creative control.” The implicative meaning of this is that, unmindful of the training afforded students by the Academy, continuous development is a personal burden each student will bear. What the films I have written about inform me is that while MTF has provided the training, guidance, financial support and structured environment, the students must individually fashion their appreciation of cinema as an art form.
The Nigerian film industry has an unmoving storytelling problem and these young bloods aren’t exempt from it. Ultimately, their artistic growth as filmmakers is reliant on their quest and thirst for personal improvement. The Nigerian film industry isn’t, as it stands, structured to reward artistic excellence and insightful storytelling. This means, to stand out, students must obsessively watch films and live and breathe cinema.
An additional insight that can be drawn from the MTF Academy is its exposure of filmmakers to a distribution pipeline for local audiences through the MultiChoice channels: Showmax, M-Net and African Magic. As mentioned by Yolisa Phahle, MultiChoice’s CEO General Entertainment and Connected Video, during the 2020 graduation ceremony, MultiChoice, as the largest continental content producer, creates over 4,500 hours of TV annually. These programmes, written in 17 African languages, are distributed across 22 channels tailored to serve specific African markets in 50 countries.
With such an expansive distribution network in place, the Academy offers aspiring filmmakers a valuable opportunity to create content, films and TV, written and performed in local languages that are not only culturally resonant but also have a ready platform to reach audiences across the continent.
However, as structured and seamless as MultiChoice’s filmmaking and distribution pipeline may appear, my conversation with one of the alumni suggests that there is a notable shortfall in post-graduation engagement. In the words of the alumni who pleaded for anonymity, “there’s no established pipeline of re-immersing the students (that have been trained for one year) back into the already existing MultiChoice workforce.”
This isn’t entirely factual as MultiChoice’s structure has had Africa Magic shows like Elenini, Irora Iya, Kadara, and others directed, executive produced by alumni like Adeniyi TAJ Joseph and Allen Onyige. Although it isn’t certain if their status as MTF alumni landed them these jobs, their affiliation with the MTF structure might have been influential. Again, the MTF and MultiChoice can only do so much in an industry that’s driven by individual initiatives. The larger question is the need for the industry to collectively build development structures and a job creation pipeline for more young and budding filmmakers.
The collaborative spirit that the Academy encourages amongst its students has gone beyond the border of filmmaking as seen in filmtech projects like Filmmakers Mart, co-founded by Eric Kafui Okyerefo, Chioma Paul-Dike, and Igho Arusi, who met at the 2019 edition of the MTF Academy and were later joined by Victor Awotidebe. The Filmmakers Mart, given the absence of production-ready sets and numerous challenges related to scouting and securing locations, was created as a solution to the draining and age-long problem of securing locations in the industry. Another non-film project by an MTF alumnus is Albantsho Limited, founded by Julie Ako in 2020, which bridges the gap between producers and writers.
To interrogate and understand the importance of MTF Academy to individual Nigerian filmmakers and the industry at large, I turn to its archive of past fellows and examine their current standing in the film ecosystem. The founders of Filmmakers Mart and Albantsho Limited serve as living testimony to the Academy’s training influence. Ideas for Filmmakers Mart were etched during the founders’ experience during MTF. Passionate about finding solutions to industry problems, Okyerefo, Filmmakers Mart’s CEO, often had conversations with Paul-Dike due to her prior industry experience. “Through constant discussions, research, and my personal experiences during MTF and the COVID period, the initial ideas began to develop,” Paul-Dike recounts.
Beyond the Academy’s direct involvement, former fellows have gone on to create films and television series of their own. One such example is Grind, a series created by Roberta Orioma, which now has two seasons streaming on Prime Video. It was directed by fellow alumni Orire Nwani and Joshua Tso-Tso. Iroagalachi, another alumna, has worked as a casting director on The Origin: Madam Koi Koi, and as a line producer on Ikenna’s Trial, Irora Iya, and Iwa Ji: A Celebration of the Igbo Culture. Her short documentary Iwa Ji: A Celebration of Igbo Culture has screened at The Annual Film Mischief, Afropolis, and is set to be screened at the iRepresent International Documentary Film Festival.
Reflecting on the academy’s impact, Eniayekan tells me that it afforded her, both directly and indirectly, a sense of community. “I’ve made lifelong friends and collaborators from there. From making my first solo short film, The Bar to producing a TV series for Maggi with friends from the MTF alumni community, I have gained a filmmaking community from the MTF alumni community,” she says. Paul-Dike adds, “one significant aspect of MTF was its encouragement of founding companies together during the early stages of the program; I would say this partially influenced our collaboration.”
As an industry that’s very much still in the business of “apprenticeship” for filmmakers, she believes that film schools like MTF are important for building structure. “We go on and on about the need for structure in the industry, but the majority do not get to experience what that can look like,” she reflects. “The fact that they are intentional about training and equipping young talents is important enough. They are creating opportunities for people to grow and believe in themselves,” Glover adds.“The most notable impact [of MTF] was being part of a community of creatives with whom I could collaborate”, Paul-Dike mentions.
The MTF Academy is slouching close to a decade in existence. And although it has its inherent flaws, it has, within this time, consistently invested in nurturing, building and launching the filmmaking careers of individual filmmakers. On a modest but meaningful scale, it is also contributing to the ongoing development of the Nigerian film industry.
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