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Dorothy Wenner, president of the 2026 AMAA jury, told Arise News in an exclusive interview that African filmmakers should stop copying Western cinema.
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She urged filmmakers to draw on their own cultures, take creative risks and avoid imitating last year’s winners.
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She called this an exceptional year and singled out Nigeria’s The Herd and Kenya’s One Woman, One Bra.
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She said African films struggle to get regular distribution in Europe because distributors see them as risky.
November 15, (THEWILL) – The president of this year’s Africa Movie Academy Awards jury has a message for African filmmakers: stop copying the West and trust your own stories. Dorothy Wenner made the call in an exclusive interview with Arise News on Sunday, the day of the 22nd AMAA ceremony at the Lagos Marriott Hotel in Ikeja.
According to Arise, Wenner said the strongest African films come from the storyteller’s own background and culture, not from a spoof of Western cinema. Authenticity, she explained, cannot be manufactured. It comes from knowing yourself.
She had advice for emerging filmmakers who look to past winners for a formula. “Don’t imitate the winner from last year”, she said, warning that it happens often.
Instead, she urged them to ask what they have to say, and how they want to say it.
She also encouraged them to take creative risks, to trust what interests them, and to aim to surprise the jury.
Wenner said the jury was impressed by what it saw. She called this an exceptional year at a time when the global film industry is asking where it goes next. A number of new names had climbed quickly, including in departments beyond directing, and films arrived from across the continent with a clear urgency to say something.
“In a such new names and new names filmmakers also in other artistic departments that really climbed to the top in lightning speed and the films that we got to see were surprising, innovative and they have a kind of, there is an urgency to say something and that we got films from all over the continent I think was making all of us very proud”, Wenner tells ARISE.
She singled out two entries. Nigeria’s The Herd and Kenya’s One Woman, One Bra, with the Kenyan film earning particular praise for its subject. She described it as a satire and comedy about international aid and its effect on communities, a topic she could not remember seeing in a feature film, and she praised its lead actress.
The comments land as the two films sit near the top of this year’s nominations.
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One Woman, One Bra leads the field with 14 nods, level with Uganda’s Slum Bomber, while The Herd has 10. Nigeria’s To Adaego With Love has 11, and Colours of Fire has nine.
Wenner also raised a challenge outside the cinema. She said African films face a hard road into regular distribution in Europe, whether documentary, comedy or any other genre, because distributors consider them too risky. Wenner, who is from Berlin, credited the AMAA with pushing for new revenue through smart strategies, not aggression.
She warned filmmakers against a trap she has seen too often: making films based on what they assume European audiences expect of Africa. She called that thinking outdated. For documentary makers, she suggested observing a world in which everyone with a phone is a director, and finding fresh forms from there.
Her closing advice was to find your own voice and tell stories grounded in your own truth. And a film’s quality, she added, depends less on budget than on how creatively the resources are used.
About AMAA
The AMAA has celebrated excellence in African cinema since 2005. This year’s nominees were announced on Saturday, October 17, in a livestream on the awards’ YouTube channel.
AMAA’s chief operating officer, Dr Raymond Anyiam-Osigwe, has described the awards as a mirror of Africa’s shared struggles, triumphs and cultures.
Gertrude Oby is a writer and journalist passionate about the creative industries. Works span fashion, film, media, art, and culture.