Jun 15, 2022

Annecy Pitch 2022: 3 promising animation projects from Nigeria.

After 2 years of covering the shrinking digital version of the Annecy Festival and the corresponding MIFA market, Cartoon Brew has returned directly to explore the pitching platform, one of the most continuously attractive segments in the market, 1.

This year's Nigeria focus caught our eye as something of an extension of the overall African animation focus in 2021 at MIFA.

Below, our thoughts about the three projects that stood out to us...

Director: Somtochukwu Onubogu

Producer: n/a

Format: Short film, 2d

Status: On the pitch, I was impressed by ullegi's 2160 2D animated short, somtochukwu onubogu, set in the near future. :Home of our dreams. It takes place in the eponymous city, a technological marvel that now floats above completely submerged Lagos. Other parts of the world are also underwater and devastated by climate disasters and earthquakes.

Interestingly, its protagonists are engineers, architects, and other big thinkers. The protagonist Seun is a descendant of the "great architect" of the floating city, and his friends–seismologists and "quiet genius" –Seun tries to suppress the truth about the connection to strange seismic activity

As many contemporary directors who are interested in sci-fi do now, Onubogu consciously uses Spider poetry and its Sony animation counterparts. A mixture of heavily speculative and afrocentric sci-fi from "Mitchell vs. Machine," Ullegi appears to be one of the session's most ambitious concepts and an exciting project to see progress.1

Director: Oluwaseyi Fajimi

Producer: n/a

Format: TV series, 26x11min episodes

Status: Development

Looking for: Broadcaster, Producer/Co-producer, Screenplay

Budget: n/a

Another conscious spin of the popular Western anime, Pepe N'tomati, TV series, 26x11min episodes

Status: Development

Looking for: Broadcaster, producer/Co-producer, screenwriter

Budget：n/a

Another conscious spin of popular Western animation, Pepe N'tomati, is a television series, 26x11min episodes

Nye full of surrealism, an exaggerated design based around 2d children's fantasy and fun Yoruba puns and various foods of adventure time [41

Director, painter and designer Oluwaseyi Fajimi builds a quirky and vivid portrait of the backstory of a magical land defined by an ancient god responsible for protecting local flora and fauna before tribalism breaks them, resulting in a comet call that destroyed the land and brought mutant monsters. A questing guild is formed around the title characters who are looking to make their fortune through monster hunting.

Beyond the works of Pendleton Ward and Ben Bocquelet, Fajimi finds their concept in the sociological composition of the city of Lagos, the division between "the island where rich people live" and "the mainland where people like me live" a sense of humor, as well as a work of fun and politically oriented children with great depth potential in its world building the project.

Director: Adebimpe Adebambo

Producer: n/a

Format: Feature film, 2d and 3d animation

Status: Development

Looking for: Broadcaster, agency, producer/Co-producer, Director, Screenplay

Budget: 1 10.5 million

Correction: In the original description of "Tejumade", as an inspiration for the story of the film, I mistakenly referred to the relationship with the filmmaker's father.'The current description is accurate, confirmed by Adebambo.