The 2024 edition of the Cameroon International Film Festival (CAMIFF) has come to a close after five days of, learning, partying, networking and awarding of worthy creators and actors.
Like any other event, CAMIFF generated its own talking points that the entertainment industry can feast on for a couple of weeks or more.
Now that the festival is over, the question we have to answer is whether the Festival lived up the hype or not.
THE REVIEW
CAMIFF Kickstarted this year on Monday April 22nd, to April 27th, 2024. The event ran for five days non-stop, with entertainment lovers, especially film enthusiasts, actors, comedians, musicians, and others, making their way to the Buea Mountain Hotel, which has been the location ever since the creation of the festival.
From the Opening night on April 22nd, to the closing ceremony on April 27th, there were an avalanche of events that happened at CAMIFF especially the red carpet moments of every night. However, the red carpet event wasn’t the only highlight of the festival whose aim over the years has been to close the gap between the Cameroon Film Industry and other African industries.
For this reason, the Festival has always had partners from other countries, every year since its inception. Over the years, we’ve seen big names from the Nigerian movie industry endorse CAMIFF; Nollywood actor Ramsey Nouah has represented the festival for years, however, this year we saw Alexx Ekubo and Enyinna Nwigwe, as representatives from Nollywood, not leaving out movie producer and actress Ruth Kadiri, who was in Cameroon for the first time.
Some of the key objectives of CAMIFF, have always been to showcase and promote the African culture. This is why films selected by CAMIFF, must be films that promote African culture, films that address issues affecting world, films about history, films made by Independent African filmmakers.
These objectives were fully met, and meritious creators, actors, and Best dressed persons, were awarded accordingly as the event concluded successfully.
Many could limit the festival to just white and masked parties, but there were indepth masterclasses, sponsored by the festival to help aspiring and established creators to not only network, but to grab ready-made knowledge for the future.
Ruth Kadiri, Valery Nchifor, Enah Jonscott, just to name a few, were some of the trainers at this year’s edition. These are of course free masteeclasses.
While Godisz Fungwa, Laura Onyama, Enah Jonscott, Enyinna Nwigwe, Alex Ekubo, were all big winners during the closing ceremony as they were all awarded, one name clearly became the star, and revelation of the event; Precious Lucha.
Attending the festival for the first time in her life, the young Cameroonian lady, easily became the talk of the media as she won “Best Dressed Female” and walked home with a sum of 100,000 Francs.
There have been many discoveries at CAMIFF this year, but Lucha Precious stood out among them all. She’s the new star born into the industry but it’s not known whether she’s an actress yet or not, however, she has garnered massive following in just five days; the beauty of CAMIFF isn’t it? It’s okay to ask what is Precious popular for as we asked that question too.
Despite the unavailability of key Cameroonian names like actress Syndy Emade, film director Kang Quintus, actor Alenne Menget and more. 80/20 advocate Cy Old Pancho and his accomplice Delly Singah were absent from CAMIFF. To sum it up, CAMIFF seemingly lived up to its hype.
The festival has continued to grow. From the updates received from those who attended, it seemed to be much better this year than last years event. With the huge sum of money and other resources put in place to realize this year’s festival, the turn up was impressive.
Another key observation, was the absence of top Francophone movie creators and actors. Their absence makes the festival look like an Anglophone affair, which is not the case because the festival is open to everyone, including film entries by producers and film directors. The event was indeed colorful and kudus can only go to actors, comedians, artists, and lovers of entertainment who were indifferent and chose to support.
In your opinion, specifically for those who attended CAMIFF this year, was the event a failure or a success?
