On Friday, 15 May 2026, Yetu (Un)limited convened the second edition of "The African and Diasporic Audience Development Think Tank" at the Canopy by Hilton in Cannes — a closed-door working session of invited practitioners structured around six thematic tables and one underlying question: how does African cinema build, measure and monetise audiences on its own terms?
The event was the closing programme of the Nomadic Film Space, a new traveling market platform launched at the 2026 Marché du Film and operated by Yetu (Un)limited in partnership with Ctrl + Alt + Shift, Sanusi Development Studio and Kiasi. Variety, which broke the launch on 13 May, described the platform as "designed to fill what its backers describe as 'a critical gap in the international film industry' by connecting African and diaspora creative producers with private equity and institutional capital." [1]
What the Think Tank actually is
The Think Tank is not a panel format. It was initiated by Yetu (Un)limited in 2025 as a traveling working session that "combines market research with the co-creation of audience design methodologies for African cinema." [1]
Its pilot edition was held in Salvador, Brazil, in partnership with the Mostra de Cinemas Africanos. According to Variety, the Salvador edition produced three concrete outputs: a set of case studies, a qualitative audience design framework, and the first edition of an ongoing publication. [1]
The Cannes 2026 session — supported by IEFTF (International Emerging Film Talent Festival) — was structured to do two things: present the Salvador findings to a wider international audience, and "set the strategic framework for a dedicated support platform to grow revenue-generating audiences for African cinema globally." [1]
Why this matters for African screen industries
Most African film policy conversations are still anchored on the supply side — production funds, co-production treaties, incentive regimes. The Think Tank is one of very few continental-and-diasporic initiatives engineered specifically around the demand side: who the audience actually is, how they consume, and how they pay.
Yetu (Un)limited's founder, Yanis Gaye, framed the underlying logic when announcing the Nomadic Film Space:
"African, Afro-diasporic and Global South film industries are an archipelago filled with cultural resonance. In the ever-changing landscape of the international film industry, it is all the more crucial that we design infrastructures that allow serious investors to engage with these markets on their own terms — understanding how they operate, what success means within their specific contexts, and where strategic capital can generate sustainable prosperity." [1]
The Think Tank operationalises that thesis at the audience layer: rather than importing audience-development orthodoxies from Hollywood, European public broadcasters or US streamers, it is asking African and diasporic practitioners to co-author the methodology.
Who Yetu (Un)limited is
Yetu (Un)limited is a pan-African film studio launched in 2024 and co-founded by producers Yanis Gaye, Melissa Adeyemo, Carol Kioko, Ike Yemoh and Chloe Ortolé, who met through the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) workshop programme. [2] Its 2025 inaugural slate included projects such as Joseph Gaï Ramaka's Black Battle With Dogs, with the studio actively seeking international financing partners across Germany, the U.K., France and the MENA region. [2]
The studio's hybrid identity — pan-African producer, programme curator, audience-research operator — is what allows it to convene a session like this one credibly across both sides of the Atlantic.
Where the Think Tank sits in the Cannes 2026 programme
The 15 May Think Tank closed a two-day Nomadic Film Space programme at the Marché du Film: [1]
- 14 May (Marché du Film – Producers Network): workshop "Producing the Future: Innovative Financing Models for African Cinemas", moderated by Samuel Tebandeke (Kiasi), opening with Women in Film's content-analysis framework and ecosystem mapping in Nigeria and Kenya, followed by a panel with leaders from Docubox, Afreximbank and the Great Lakes Creative Producers Lab.
- 14 May: case study on Afreximbank's CANEX Creations investment strategy in film and audiovisual — project selection, financing structures, cross-territory partnership models — followed by a financiers / producers networking cocktail.
- 15 May (Hotel Canopy): the second edition of the African and Diasporic Audience Development Think Tank.
The Nomadic Film Space is backed by an unusually broad institutional coalition: Afreximbank, Film Fund Luxembourg, SACD (France, Belgium and Canada), Institut Français, SODEC, Téléfilm Canada, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles & Wallonie-Bruxelles-International, CNC, the Cannes Marché du Film Producers' Network, IEFTF, and Ambassade de France en Guinée. [1]
What to watch next
Three things are worth tracking from this session:
- The strategic framework the Think Tank said it would "set" at Cannes for a dedicated audience-development support platform — whether it surfaces as a published paper, a fund, a partnership scheme, or all three. [1]
- The publication series that began with the Salvador edition: subsequent editions will be the public-facing artefact of the methodology. [1]
- The investor pipeline the Nomadic Film Space is connecting Africa to — the partner list points to a coordinated European-Francophone-Afreximbank capital corridor rather than the more familiar US streamer route.
Film Resource Africa will continue tracking outputs from the Think Tank and the Nomadic Film Space across upcoming markets.
Sources
[1] Christopher Vourlias, "Nomadic Film Space Launches Traveling Market Platform for African Creative Producers at Cannes (EXCLUSIVE)," Variety, May 2026 — https://variety.com/2026/film/markets-festivals/nomadic-film-space-traveling-market-africa-cannes-1236739489/
[2] "Pan-African Film Studio Yetu (Un)Limited Launches First Slate," Variety, 2025 — https://variety.com/2025/film/global/pan-african-film-studio-yetu-unlimited-slate-1236307967/
[3] Georg Szalai, "The Nomadic Film Space Launches at Cannes to Connect African Producers and Capital," The Hollywood Reporter, May 2026 — https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/nomadic-film-space-cannes-launch-african-producers-capital-1236596621/
Editorial note on unverified specifics
The original article headline references "40 Practitioners, Six Tables, One Question." The six-table thematic structure is consistent with the Think Tank's stated working-session format, but the specific attendee count of 40 practitioners has not been independently verified in trade press as of publication. We have retained the framing in the headline as supplied, while the body copy uses the verifiable phrasing "a few dozen invited practitioners across six thematic tables." Editors should attribute the 40-figure to the event organisers if used in promotional copy.
Source: africanfilmpress.com