By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

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The Ladima Foundation in partnership with the DW Akademie announced a short film competition for African women content creators and filmmakers on life during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The competition aims to encourage African women to share their real-life stories from different African countries as they face various degrees of lockdowns that limit their movements, opportunities and, often, basic freedoms. The organisers argue that the pandemic has affected women more in terms of increasing cases of domestic violence and their burden of care.

This film competition invites the women filmmakers to share experiences that are honest, personal, and specifically related to Covid-19. Entries across genres are welcome, from animation and fiction, to documentary or interview style – the content just needs to be two minutes or shorter.

The themes should be on women with special needs/coping with special needs during the lockdown/caring for persons with special needs during a global pandemic; impact on family/domestic life; economic/impact on work life; domestic violence/abuse; hope in the time of Covid-19; are women paying a higher price?; how does the crisis highlight and affect the role of women?; the crisis offering an opportunity to rethink the social order; and, solidarity and empowerment among women.

Entry is free and registration can be done on the Ladima Foundation’s website. The initiative dubbed African Women in the Time of Covid-19: A Short Film Competition runs from June 1-21.

Ten winning films will be selected by a jury and then streamed on the Ladima website along with other partner websites. Winners will also receive 500 euro each and access to a year’s worth of webinars on the USA’s Women Make Movies platform valued at about $500.

The Ladima Foundation supports, trains and mentors women in film, TV and content creation.