Flix Oven has launched an African-Korean filmmaker residency program, naming “Mami Wata” director C.J. Obasi as its inaugural fellow, the corporate revealed on the Cannes Film Market.
The Seoul-based firm has partnered with Continental Leisure, an African-focused illustration and manufacturing outfit based by Ozi Menakaya, to deliver African filmmakers to Korea for prolonged script growth residencies.
Obasi is ready for a month-long Seoul keep to work on a brand new function described as a narrative bridging African and Korean cultures, with a theatrical launch deliberate. Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary will function government producers via their Revelations Leisure banner.
Obasi’s “Mami Wata” premiered at Sundance in 2023, earned an Unbiased Spirit Award nomination and represented Nigeria on the 96th Academy Awards. The Variety review of the film out of Sundance mentioned: “Shot in dense, high-contrast black and white, writer-director C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi’s ‘Mami Wata,’ unspools like a mysterious dream. It’s both inscrutable and hypnotic, delivering indelible images while remaining narratively opaque. Billed as a ‘West African folklore,’ its story could be taken as a straightforward fable about tradition vs. modernity and how power corrupts. But as its plot unravels, confounding layers surface beneath that easy explanation.”
Flix Oven, led by South African producer Thomas Maitland and Korean producer Lee Hyojin, has been broadening its worldwide attain on a number of fronts. The corporate recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Mediawan’s Ego Productions label for collaboration throughout European markets and unveiled its subsequent Indian co-production, “Amor,” in New Delhi throughout Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s state go to. Its Korean-Indian co-production “Made in Korea” continues to carry out on Netflix.
Obasi is represented by Justin Littman at Sycamore Media and at Continental Leisure.
