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Kudzaishe Muhamba Arts Reporter

The Zimbabwe International Film Festival Trust (ZIFFT) on Friday night announced the launch of the 21st edition of ZIFFT with new a theme and a programme which will benefit both upcoming and established film producers and directors.

Like other organisations and business, ZIFFT also suffered some Covid-19 pandemic implications and has been out of business for two years now.

Speaking at a press briefing in Harare , ZIFFT founder and executive director Nigel Munyati said: “The 21st edition of the Zimbabwe Film Festival will run from December 8 to 11 and it is resuming after two years of absence due to Covid-19 and because of that we lost some sponsors.

“We are glad to announce that we have managed to secure sponsors for our project, that is PlayAfrika and Tellcom “

The theme for this year’s festival is “Owning our story”.

“For far too long, we have been promoting stories from the Western perspective and it is time Zimbabweans start telling their own story,” said Munyati.

The highlight of the festival will be the short film competition and the smartphone competition.

“We are mainly aiming at younger and imaging film makers and we are also including Zimbabweans in the Diaspora for the smartphone competition to be able to tell stories about their heritage,” said Munyati.

“We aim to develop or pilot on how we can take narratives from Zimbabwe and package them into content that can be enjoyed by people around and abroad.”

Business director at Tellcom Dumisani Nkala said: “The Zimbabwe Vision 2030 is also around digitalisation, which, in terms of entertainment, is also in line with culture, more to do with shaping culture through art,” he said.

“If Zimbabwe wants a strong sustainable culture, we need to start transmitting that culture through art, especially film. We need to start to push our young people towards content that is locally generated, that is going to create strong identity among us, strong national identity.

“We have stories and we have a culture that is interesting to the world. We need to export that story, that culture to the rest of  the world.