The sophomore film from “The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire” director Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich and the feature debut of rising Senegalese filmmaker Awa Moctar Gueye are among the projects that pan-African production outfit Yetu (Un)Limited will be pitching to prospective partners at the European Film Market.
A collective of five creative producers looking to unlock the growing potential of African and diasporic content, Yetu (Un)Limited is among the five companies selected to take part in the Company Matching program at this year’s Berlinale Co-Production Market.
Launched in 2024, Yetu (Un)Limited was founded by producers Yanis Gaye, Melissa Adeyemo, Carol Kioko, Ike Yemoh and Chloe Ortolé, after meeting at a workshop hosted by the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE).
“Oftentimes, when you go to a space like EAVE as an African producer, you’re constantly being reminded of how you should be connecting outside of the continent,” Adeyemo tells Variety. “For us, it became more important to be connecting and figuring out ways to work with each other.”
Describing their venture as a “pan-African film studio,” the producers — who are each developing a slate of projects through their independent production companies — decided to pool their resources and know-how, recognizing that a strength-in-numbers approach “allows us to have an impact on the creative production process, from development to marketing and exhibition,” according to Gaye.
The company’s current slate includes “Days of the Dog,” Hunt-Ehrlich’s follow-up to her shimmering debut “Ballad,” which was described as an “intoxicating reverie” by Variety after its Rotterdam premiere last year. The film follows Dot, a reserved Black American woman in her mid-20s, who navigates isolation in a new city and forms a complex connection with a mysterious artist named Leonardo. Yetu (Un)Limited is looking to secure international financing and production partners, particularly in Germany, the U.K., France and the MENA region.
“Black Battle With Dogs” is the latest from veteran Senegalese director Joseph Gaï Ramaka, whose musical romance “Karmen Geï” premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar in 2001. Adapted from the French play written by Bernard Marie Koltès, the film is being billed as a tragic, enchanted tale of colonial passions and the affections of women and men on a night at the brink of change.
Last on the inaugural slate is “Safara,” the first feature from Awa Moctar Gueye, whose short film, “Timis,” premiered in the Berlinale’s Generation strand in 2023. In her debut, Gueye uses fantastical elements to tell the story of a 15-year-old girl who discovers a murdered woman in her working-class Dakar neighborhood and follows mysterious signs to uncover the truth about the prime suspect.
As the producers seek out international partners this week in Berlin, Adeyemo says their goal is not only to develop a wide-ranging slate of films that spans the gamut from elevated genre to auteur-driven cinema, but to also develop a distribution ecosystem that will allow such content to thrive.
“We’re in this new phase in film distribution and exhibition where there’s so many new audiences that the traditional market has not chosen to pay attention to and access,” she says. “When you’re dealing with African or African diasporic content, the audiences are much wider than we have been giving them credit for.”