Five Takeaways From the Joburg Film Festival and JBX Content Market

The eighth edition of the Joburg Film Festival wrapped Sunday, putting a bow on a busy week that saw organizers fielding a record 700 submissions from nearly 100 countries — a testament to their ongoing efforts to turn the growing event into the premier platform for cinema on the continent.

But the mood was less buoyant at the JBX, or Joburg Xchange, a three-day industry event running parallel to the festival. For all the boisterous energy around the Sandton Convention Center this week, attendees were left stunned by the announcement that Canal+ would be shutting down the Showmax streaming service, which the French media giant acquired as part of its $2 billion acquisition of South Africa’s MultiChoice last year. 

Africa’s largest homegrown streaming platform was the lifeblood for many producers — particularly in South Africa. The news only compounded the dire state of the film and television industry in the host nation, which has spent the past three years in a tête-à-tête with the local government over its fledgling rebate system.

For all the clouds assembled over a rainy Johannesburg this week, though, many filmmakers remained optimistic — or, at the very least, determined to soldier on in the way that only African creatives know how.

Here are five takeaways from this year’s Joburg Film Festival and JBX market:

A South African industry in freefall

It was déjà vu all over again at this year’s Joburg Film Festival, with South African film and television workers again calling on the government to rescue a rebate in crisis. Three years of protracted payment delays have pushed the industry into a freefall, with more than 660 million rand ($40.4 million) yet to be paid out by the Dept. of Trade and Industry Corporation, which administers the floundering incentive scheme. “It’s really horrific,” said Luke Rous, an actor and producer who serves on the executive committee of the Independent Producers Organization. Local industry professionals aren’t sitting idly by, with hundreds marching on Parliament in January, demanding immediate action.

There have been signs of productive dialogue in the weeks since that could eventually create a pathway out of the morass. But “investor confidence has definitely taken a hit,” according to Leon Forde, of film consultancy firm Olsberg SPI, and the government needs to act now to rescue the local film industry — and shore up confidence abroad, according to Joel Chikapa Phiri, executive chairman of South African heavyweight Known Associates Group, who on a recent Hollywood charm offensive said studio bosses are fretting that the Rainbow Nation’s fallen “off the map.” “They love South Africa,” Phiri said. “They’re ready to come back.”

Canal+ pulls the plug on Showmax

There’d been a sense of foreboding throughout the local industry since Canal+ completed its $2 billion takeover of South African pay-TV giant MultiChoice last year, with the French media giant mum on its post-merger plans and suspicion rampant that cost-cutting measures were in the cards. The other shoe finally dropped this week, when Variety broke the news that Canal+ was officially pulling the plug on homegrown streaming service Showmax.

By the numbers, the move made sense. Since relaunching the platform in 2024 with NBCUniversal, MultiChoice and its Comcast partner poured a combined $309 million in equity funding into Showmax to primarily fuel content creation. In the end, though, nothing came of the streamer’s aggressive growth and subscriber uptake targets. Just two months ago, Canal+ CFO Amandine ‌Ferré insisted that the platform’s losses were “unacceptable” to her company as it weighed the streamer’s fate. The writing was already on the wall.

That didn’t make the news any easier to swallow around the JBX market this week, with one producer confessing he felt “ill” over the announcement and another ruing that the move effectively “decapitated the only African streamer.” What comes next for Canal+’s streaming strategy on the continent remains anybody’s guess. But as one industry source summed up: “[South African] producers are freaking the fuck out.”

What next for African distribution?

“Streaming was seen as the great democratizer — especially in Africa,” producer Paul Buys lamented this week in Joburg. Yet the decision by Canal+ to shutter Showmax comes two years after Prime Video scaled back its own ambitions to become the biggest player in Africa, effectively pulling out of the market. While Netflix says it remains committed to the continent, the lack of competition will only weaken the hand of African producers. There are fewer and fewer places to turn. Commissioning budgets at both private and public broadcasters have been declining for years. “Show me the buyers,” as one South African industry source put it.

If there was a silver lining to the clouds this week in a rainy Johannesburg, it’s that African filmmakers have long prided themselves on being resilient — and resourceful. While the loss of Showmax was a bitter pill to swallow, there were calls throughout the week for more partnerships, more collaborations, more efforts to unlock cross-border revenue streams in everything from theatrical to free-to-air broadcasting to the booming diaspora market. “What can we do as Africans now that the streamers have left?” said Milton Reddy, of Johannesburg-based Known Associates Distribution. “We have to think out of the box.”

Can Africa cash in on microdrama boom?

While no one’s suggesting African content producers should scale back their ambitions, is it time for them to think…small? With a billion-plus mobile phones on the continent— many of which function as the primary screen for consumers — Africa could be the next untapped market for a microdrama industry that’s projected to grow to $26 billion in annual revenue by 2030. Cape Town-based production company Both Worlds, which this week announced a partnership with U.S. outfit Freeli Films to co-produce a slate of vertical series and movies, is betting that’s the case, with a distribution strategy built around partnerships with major mobile operators across the continent. Meanwhile, Elouise Kelly, country manager in South Africa for Viu, noted that the Asian streaming giant has already begun dubbing Korean microdramas into Indigenous South African languages like Zulu as it looks to expand into the African market. “What is the next iteration?” she said. “We need to see how to personalize it for South Africa and Africa and make it our own. Because I think that’s where the opportunity lies.”

With fewer buyers in the market, African content creators need to be willing to meet the consumers where they are. “There’s lot of places where your storytelling can fit,” said Thandeka Zwana, of South Africa’s Indigenous Film Distribution. “Adapt. Think different. Widen your horizons. Adapt to a changing world. See how consumers are changing. Because they are not stagnant. You cannot tell the same story in the same way and expect the audience to keep watching.”

Politics in the spotlight

Kicking off just days after debates over free speech and censorship nearly torpedoed the most contentious and politically charged Berlinale in recent memory, and as the Israel-U.S. attacks on Iran turned into a regional conflagration, the Joburg Film Festival certainly didn’t shy away from difficult subject matter, whether in Zamo Mkhwanazi’s apartheid-era opener “Laundry” or Tshililo waha Muzila’s timely migration doc “The Little Black Man From the Congo” or Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” 

“This festival happens at the moment when the world feels anything but nuanced — at the moment when artists are being asked: Should you speak or should you stay silent?” said festival curator Nhlanhla Ndaba on opening night. Referencing the “fierce debate [in Berlin] about whether filmmakers should engage in politics, Ndaba added: “The Joburg Film Festival has always been a space where politics and artistry meet, where the African continent and the world connect, where politics are just but another story. Where we don’t pretend that storytelling happens in a vacuum.” Meanwhile, South African producer and festival juror Cait Pansegrouw insisted on the red carpet that “film is inherently political,” adding: “People don’t give enough thought to the fact that with the rise of fascism, freedom of expression is in real danger, and we should absolutely be talking about everything that we want to talk about and be asking really tough questions.”

The Joburg Film Festival runs March 3 – 8 in Johannesburg.