Great cinema is what happens while you're busy waiting... for permission.
Fanon is an ambitious young filmmaker attending an international film festival. She is desperately looking for a producer to back her debut feature film, but the more that she explores and observes the festival space, the more she questions whether she will ever find her place in this world. A self-reflexive project documenting the film industry from the viewpoint of a young African female filmmaker called Fanon--the only fictional character in the film.
"Film Festival Film" is a movie shot over a weekend at the Durban International Film Festival, South Africa, in July 2018 by the underground South African collective Medu African Film Ensemble (aka Medu AF).With a sense of mischief and minimal resources pooled together by its contributors, the film tells the story of Fanon (played by "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom" star Lindiwe Matshikiza) - a young black African female filmmaker beset by her demons ten floors up in an ocean-side hotel, gazing out over African shores during the hermetically-sealed weirdness that is the world of a film festival.Using elements of fiction & documentary, the film follows Fanon as she wrestles with what the film industry expects her to be, and not to be, as she readies herself to pitch her first film.Fanon navigates this uncharted territory, while a supporting cast of real-world, "leading, industry professionals", including a new member of the AcademyTM and an EmmyTM award-winner, dish out advice straight to camera, while seated in her hotel room but seem to never address her directly - are they apparitions or voices in her head?Always in the wings are the rest of the team, posing as a documentary crew, caught in reflective glimpses and snatches of conversations, asking questions of hyper-capitalism and racial prejudice, interrogating the notion of what makes a "good film", and who gets to decide such things. Behind-the-scenes shifts to front-of-scene and back again, theory blends with praxis, as it becomes less and less clear who has the reins, unsettling the foundations of the so-called proper way of doing things."Film Festival Film" is purposefully improper, a film about film festivals, made at a film festival, meant to turn the mirror on film festivals, which have a habit of glorifying those who point their cameras wherever they wish, but never like to share their toys.But there is hope in Fanon. She knows she is the future. Up on the 10th floor, surrounded by all the noise, it's time for her to set flight and make an immense leap of faith - in herself.
