Filmmakers embrace AI as Hollywood debates risks

When Zara Sodangi, 17, earns admission to Nigeria’s most prestigious fictional tech academy, Makemation, her world suddenly shifts from survival in a poor Lagos neighbourhood to the demanding universe of artificial intelligence, product design and data analytics.

The coming-of-age feature film follows the brilliant but financially struggling teenager as she navigates elite technology education, class barriers and self-doubt while trying to transform her family's fortunes through innovation.

But beyond the emotional storyline, 'Makemation' itself represents something larger now unfolding across African cinema.

As filmmakers gathered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival to debate whether generative artificial intelligence threatens the future of cinema, some African producers are already experimenting with AI as a practical production tool.

They are using it to reduce costs, expand creative possibilities and work around long-standing financing and infrastructure constraints.

The producers behind ‘Makemation’, described as Africa’s first AI-themed feature film, have framed artificial intelligence not only as a storytelling subject but also as part of the production workflow itself, combining generative AI systems with live-action filmmaking.

According to the film's official website, the production employed high-end production systems, including Arri Alexa LF camera packages, CGI, holograms and advanced visual effects integration.

This reflects a growing push among African filmmakers to bridge technology and storytelling at a level traditionally associated with much larger production markets.

That experimentation is increasingly moving beyond isolated projects. Across parts of Africa’s creative industries, filmmakers, animators and post-production teams are beginning to test AI-assisted workflows in editing, subtitling, dubbing, sound enhancement, animation, storyboarding and visual effects production as pressure mounts to lower the cost of producing high-quality content.

PUSHED BY NEED

The shift is emerging as African film industries grapple with structural bottlenecks, ranging from limited financing and expensive equipment costs to weak studio ecosystems and fragmented continental distribution systems.

For many smaller studios and independent creators, AI is beginning to look less like a futuristic disruption and more like an operational shortcut.

According to Unesco, Africa’s film and audiovisual sector already supports more than five million jobs and generates roughly $5 billion annually across the continent.

Yet much of the industry still operates under severe resource constraints.

Visual effects capacity remains expensive and limited in many African markets, forcing some productions to outsource advanced post-production work abroad or significantly reduce creative ambition altogether.

That imbalance, according to sector analyst Kenim Oba, reflects a much deeper structural problem that has shaped African cinema for decades.

“Hollywood did not become Hollywood simply because America had better stories. It became Hollywood because it built and protected an entire production system,” Oba says.

“The West built the machinery of global storytelling and then controlled access to it.”

Oba says Africa was not only excluded from capital flows but also from what she describes as “production intelligence” — the technical infrastructure, post-production systems, distribution pipelines and industrial knowledge that transform storytelling into scalable commercial media.

Yet despite those constraints, Nollywood emerged as one of the world’s largest film industries by output.

According to Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, the country produces thousands of films annually through a rapid, low-cost production model that has built one of Africa’s most influential cultural industries.

For Oba, that evolution matters because it disproved a long-standing assumption in global media markets.

“African storytelling was never too small. The problem was whether African creators could convert demand into sustainable economics,” she said.

That economic question is now colliding directly with artificial intelligence.

Across YouTube, TikTok and emerging creator platforms, African filmmakers are increasingly experimenting with AI-generated visual worlds, futuristic African cities, folklore-inspired fantasy universes and animated historical reconstructions that would previously have required budgets far beyond the reach of most independent creators.

NEW PRODUCTION MODEL

Some projects remain rough and experimental. Others are beginning to attract substantial online engagement precisely because they attempt something historically difficult for African productions: visually ambitious world-building at relatively low cost.

“This is not a small shift. It is the beginning of a new production model,” Oba says.

She notes that AI dramatically lowers the cost of visual development by allowing filmmakers to generate concept art, mood boards, storyboards, character studies and prototype worlds long before major financing arrives.

That matters in African film industries, where creators have historically struggled to convince investors to finance large-scale productions without expensive proof-of-concept material.

“Instead of asking investors to imagine the vision, creators can show it,” Oba says.

“Instead of waiting for a studio to approve an African fantasy universe, a filmmaker can prototype it.”

The implications extend beyond filmmaking itself. AI-assisted subtitling and dubbing technologies could help African productions travel more easily across the continent’s fragmented linguistic markets, spanning English, French, Arabic, Portuguese and dozens of widely spoken African languages, such as Swahili and Hausa.

That possibility is becoming increasingly important as streaming platforms and digital distribution networks expand demand for localised African content.

The continent’s rapidly growing gaming, advertising and animation sectors are also watching the transition closely.

In Nigeria, the emergence of AI-focused creative communities is already beginning to formalise experimentation around the technology.

The Naija Artificial Intelligence Film Festival, launched in 2025, attracted hundreds of submissions from multiple countries, signalling growing interest in AI-generated storytelling, hybrid animation and experimental production techniques.

The development suggests Africa’s relationship with artificial intelligence may be evolving beyond passive consumption towards active experimentation inside creative industries.

That narrative sharply contrasts with much of the current global AI debate.

In Hollywood and parts of Europe, discussions around artificial intelligence have largely centred on ethical concerns surrounding authorship, labour displacement, copyright protection and the replacement of human creativity.

Those tensions intensified at the Cannes Film Festival this year, which ran from May 12-23, where filmmakers and studios remained divided over how deeply generative AI should enter cinema production.

“AI is here. And so to fight it is to, in a sense, fight something that is a battle we will lose,” American actress and producer Demi Moore said during the opening ceremony.

“So finding ways in which we can work with it is a more valuable path to take.”

LEVELLING THE PLAYFIELD

African filmmakers are approaching the technology from a fundamentally different economic position.

For many producers on the continent, the immediate challenge is not preserving highly capitalised studio systems but finding ways to scale production quality under persistent financial and technical limitations.

That distinction may ultimately shape how aggressively African creators adopt AI-assisted filmmaking tools compared to wealthier film industries.

At the same time, African film entrepreneurs are beginning to experiment with AI far beyond content generation itself.

Grace Olubiyo, founder of the Africa-focused film marketing intelligence platform CR8US AI, argues that one of African cinema’s biggest problems has not been creativity but filmmakers’ weak audience intelligence and poor market targeting.

“The reason most African films underperform has nothing to do with the script,” Olubiyo wrote recently on a LinkedIn post. “It is because filmmakers go to market blind.”

Her company is building AI systems designed to help filmmakers identify audience behaviour, release timing and marketing opportunities before films are launched.

“CR8US AI is not touching your script. It is not generating your film,” she wrote.

“Your creativity is yours. CR8US AI just makes sure the right people see it.”

That shift suggests artificial intelligence may increasingly reshape not only how African films are produced but also how they are marketed, distributed and monetised.

Still, the transition carries significant risks.

Oba warns that African creators could face a new era of cultural extraction if African aesthetics, mythology and storytelling traditions are absorbed into global AI systems without African ownership over the platforms, intellectual property and distribution infrastructure capturing the value.

“The fight is not simply to be seen,” she said. “The fight is to own the systems through which we are seen.”