Over the past year, we’ve witnessed the incredible growth of storytelling, with many new voices emerging across both fiction and non-fiction spaces. This rise in creative expression, however, is unfolding amid shrinking resources and support at both distribution and industry levels. As traditional avenues adapt to the constantly evolving entertainment landscape, resources for storytellers are increasingly scarce.

For instance, major streaming platforms like Amazon have scaled back operations in regions like the African continent. Despite these challenges, we firmly believe this moment presents a unique opportunity to unite, leveraging our collective creativity, ingenuity, and limited resources to grow audiences, build impactful bodies of work and nurture a growing pool of talent. Expanding our audiences is key to sustaining and enriching our creative community. With more platforms and diverse content forms, it’s essential that we support each other’s work and find ways to collaborate, fostering deeper audience engagement and expanding access to new voices.

One project we’re particularly proud of is Beneath the Tides, an anthology of short films we’ve shared through cinemas, community screenings, festivals, and streaming platforms. This collaboration among various production teams and funding partners inspired us profoundly, as audience responses underscored the power of bringing creatives together and offering audiences a diversity of stories they might not otherwise experience. We’re excited that some of these short films are now in development as feature-length projects, and we’re already working on a second anthology to continue this mission.

As we celebrate this anniversary, we look forward to cultivating more innovative partnerships, deepening our commitment to the industry, and collaborating with a shared vision for impactful storytelling.