As Trino Motion Pictures enters its second decade, the Nigerian production and sales company is setting its sights on a pair of ambitious international distribution goals: securing a Hollywood studio-backed pipeline for its films in North America and building another slate capable of reaching more than 100 territories in over 100 languages.
The plans provide greater context for Trino’s recent appointment of former Paramount Pictures executive and investor Richard Aseme to its advisory board. His remit centres on two areas of international sales and distribution, and helping the company pursue capital from international investors and institutions.
“We look forward to benefiting from his experience in structuring international sales strategies, identifying global distribution channels, and building relationships with international partners that will help our films reach wider audiences,” Trino managing director Uche Okocha exclusively told What Kept Me Up.
Aseme is also expected to support the company as it explores international financing and expands its operations, drawing on a career spanning film distribution and investment. He has spent more than two decades in the film industry, including senior roles at Paramount Pictures covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa, before moving into venture investment and emerging technology.
His appointment comes as Trino marks 10 years since its establishment in 2016, following a period in which the company has expanded from producing its own films into international sales, content acquisition and representation for other African producers. Trino, founded by Okocha and Babatunwa Aderinokun, describes itself as a production, marketing, sales and distribution company, with a catalogue that also includes Sylvia, Three Thieves, The Razz Guy, The One for Sarah, KM17 and Love Lockdown.
From production company to international sales outfit
Across its first decade, Trino has built a catalogue of 16 titles, including eight feature films, with its work reaching more than 75 territories through cinemas, streaming, television and in-flight entertainment.
An international focus emerged relatively early. Its first feature, Sylvia, debuted at NollywoodWeek Paris in 2018 ahead of its Nigerian theatrical release, beginning a trajectory that would eventually lead to the much wider international journey of The Weekend. The company’s early short The Encounter also won the AMVCA for Best Soundtrack/Original Score in 2017, while Sylvia received seven nominations at the Golden Movie Awards Africa alongside further AMVCA recognition.
That profile reached a new level with The Weekend. In addition to its Tribeca world premiere and subsequent international sales, the film received 16 nominations at the 2024 Africa Movie Academy Awards and won four, including Best Film, Best Nigerian Film, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
The development of Trino’s business has increasingly followed the international trajectory of its films. In 2025, the company formally launched a Content Acquisition and Sales Division, expanding beyond producing and distributing its own projects to acquiring and representing titles from other African producers.
That division has already begun generating activity outside Trino’s own catalogue. Earlier this year, the company acted as sales agent for To Adaego With Love, securing a Nigerian theatrical distribution deal for the film after it won Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay at AFRIFF 2025. Trino is also building an acquisition and sales slate that includes Aljana and Dead Tide alongside To Adaego With Love.
The expansion means Aseme is joining a company whose international sales ambitions are no longer limited to finding audiences for its own productions. Trino is increasingly positioning itself as a sales and distribution partner for other African filmmakers, while simultaneously building the expertise and relationships required to take its own slate into more territories.
Building on The Weekend
Directed by Daniel Oriahi, The Weekend became the first Nigerian feature selected for the Tribeca Festival when it premiered there in 2024. Its subsequent international journey has included licensing to SBS On Demand in Australia, HBO Max across Central and Eastern Europe and Canal+ across more than 60 French-speaking territories.
For Trino, the film demonstrated that an independently produced Nigerian title could travel widely without relying on a single global streaming deal. That lesson has taken on added significance amid the slowdown in international streaming investment and commissioning across the region.
“Perhaps the biggest lesson was that there isn’t only one path for Nollywood content to travel internationally,” Okocha said. “You can pursue a global platform strategy, or you can license content territory by territory and still reach audiences around the world.”
The company also came away convinced that securing an international sales representative is not enough on its own. According to Okocha, producers need partners who believe in a film, understand how it should be positioned and already possess relationships with buyers in the relevant markets.
“You don’t want representation simply for the sake of having representation,” he said. “You want a rep that genuinely believes in the content, has the right strategy for it, and has the relationships needed to introduce it to new markets, new audiences and commercial opportunities.”
Aseme’s arrival is therefore intended to help Trino turn the experience of one film into a repeatable system for a wider slate.
“We’ve crossed a significant threshold with The Weekend, which travelled internationally across almost every continent and demonstrated that a film produced in Nigeria can resonate with audiences around the world,” Okocha said.
“What we’re building isn’t a one-off success or a fortunate moment, but something with genuine long-term global potential.”
Europe, the UK and Brazil among target markets
Although Trino describes its ultimate focus as global, the company plans to expand first in territories where it has already started establishing distribution pipelines.
French-speaking Europe and Africa are among those markets, following its Canal+ licensing activity. Trino is also seeking to create a more consistent theatrical pipeline in the United Kingdom, where it released a film in 2025.
The company is additionally exploring Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking territories, with Brazil identified as a particular area of interest.
“For many years, we’ve consumed telenovelas from those markets, and we’ve discovered there’s also a growing appetite there for African content,” Okocha said.
This territorial approach reflects Trino’s intention to develop individual relationships with distributors rather than waiting for a single platform to acquire worldwide rights. It is also pursuing international co-productions and has begun discussions with production companies in Nigeria and abroad, although no specific project or partnership is ready to be announced.
Nollywood’s international sales gap
The strategy also reflects what Okocha regards as a major structural weakness within the Nigerian film industry: the shortage of professionals able to sell films internationally.
Nigeria produces between 70 and 80 films for local cinemas annually, he estimated, alongside another 30 to 40 titles that reach domestic festivals but may not secure Nigerian distribution. Only a small number of international sales specialists currently represent that volume of work, with the same shortage visible across much of the continent.
The consequences, Okocha argued, extend beyond films simply failing to reach international audiences.
“When I think about the lack of sufficient international sales experts and the international prospects of Nigerian films, I think about underrepresentation,” he said. “I think about the inability to properly realise the value of our content and its monetisation from multiple territories and languages. I think about missed partnerships, missed jobs and great career opportunities within our ecosystem.”
Trino has sought to address that gap through the International Sales and Distribution Executives programme, developed in partnership with Ijeoma Onah’s Nigerian International Film and TV Summit.
The programme’s first cohort of 12 participants was inducted on May 2, 2025. Combining virtual and physical training, it introduced participants to international sales, aggregation, licensing, negotiation and distribution across film, television and other content formats. The programme was conceived after Trino’s own experience building its sales and distribution operations exposed a shortage of trained professionals and structured routes into that side of the industry.
The first cohort graduated during NIFS Lagos in August 2025, with internship and placement opportunities forming part of the programme’s intended route from training into practical industry work.
Some of its earliest results are now visible. Cohort member Sherif Adekunle subsequently joined Trino, giving the company a direct personnel outcome from the initiative. Another graduate, Faustina Okomayin, moved into international sales with UK-based agency AfroFilms Global. In May 2026, she attended her first international market as a sales agent for the company at the Marché du Film in Cannes, representing African titles before international buyers and distributors.
The programme returned for a second edition in 2026. Announced in March, Cohort Two accommodated 12 participants in a three-month hybrid residency and mentorship programme, including a five-day in-person incubation during NIFS Lagos. Successful participants were also promised six-month internships with international sales and distribution companies.
“We are not just being vocal about it, but we are already building capacity,” Okocha said.
Trino says it ultimately wants to help develop a wider network of African sales executives, territorial distributors and international sales agencies that can serve projects beyond its own catalogue. Over time, it expects those relationships to create opportunities for co-productions, foreign investment and further capacity building across emerging areas of the screen business.
The ambitions for Trino’s second decade
Trino has not disclosed how many films it intends to produce or distribute annually under its expansion plan, nor has it announced a specific capital target connected to Aseme’s appointment.
But Trino is unusually specific about the scale of distribution it wants to achieve.
The company wants one pipeline of locally produced, premium African films distributed in North America by a major Hollywood studio. Separately, it wants to establish another pipeline for global distribution across more than 100 territories, with the films dubbed into more than 100 languages.
The objectives suggest that Trino is attempting to move beyond occasional international licensing successes towards recurring output that can be financed, localised and distributed across several markets.
For Aseme, that wider ambition is part of what makes the company’s next phase compelling.
“There is a clear opportunity for production companies emerging from Africa to operate globally—not as regional players, but as part of the international ecosystem,” he said. “Trino is already moving in that direction, and I’m excited to support that next phase.”
For Trino, that would mean reaching a point where international circulation is built into a recurring pipeline, rather than an exceptional outcome, for an individual Nigerian film.
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