Idris Elba is no absentee boss.
As part of his continued efforts to develop Africa’s film industry, the Golden Globe-winning actor plans to build film studios in Ghana and Tanzania over the next 10 years. He says this is a job that cannot be achieved in a London postcode.
“I’m here to strengthen the film industry. This is a 10-year process,” Elba told the BBC in an interview published Tuesday. “I can’t do that from abroad. I need to be inside the continent."
The “Luther” star said he plans to move “within the next five to 10 years, God willing,” and will be traveling to various locations, including Accra, Ghana, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Zanzibar, Tanzania. spoke. This is where they tell the story. ”
Elva’s father was from Sierra Leone and her mother was from Ghana.
In August, Tanzanian authorities finalized the allocation of about 200 acres of land on the island of Zanzibar to Elba Island, where Elba plans to build a film studio tentatively titled West Africa Studios. The country’s Investment Minister Sharif Ali Sharif said at the time that the studio could rival any studio in “Hollywood, Nollywood or Bollywood” and could become “Zollywood.”
In February 2023, Elba told the Ghanaian press that he had been working for three or four years to develop a plan to put the facility at the center of African film production, adding that existing facilities were “understaffed”. ” he pointed out.
A 2022 UNESCO report notes that despite a “significant increase in production” (Nigeria’s film industry alone produces approximately 2,500 films annually, with estimated total revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars), He said film production in Africa was hampered by issues such as piracy and insubstantial training. Lack of opportunity and official film institutions.
Elba told the BBC that “this sector is a soft power, not just for Ghana, but for Africa as a whole”, adding that with the right resources and infrastructure, African filmmakers can learn from the colonial era provided by Western media about the continent. He added that the story can be challenged.
“If you watch a movie or anything related to Africa, all you see is trauma, how we were slaves, how we were colonized, how it was just a war. That’s what I mean,” Elba said. Go to Africa and you’ll see that’s not true. ”
He continued: “It’s so important that we own the stories about our heritage, our culture, our languages and the differences between languages. The world doesn’t know that.”
Outside of entertainment, Elba also has plans to develop an “ecocity” on Cherbulo Island, a tropical island off the southwest coast of Sierra Leone, where his father is from. The project is being led by Siaka Stevens, Elba’s childhood friend and grandson of the former Sierra Leone prime minister of the same name, and aims to bring renewable wind power to the country for the first time.
“It’s a dream, but I work in pretend business,” Elba told the BBC in March. “It’s about being self-reliant, and having an economy that can feed itself and has the potential for growth. I really want to reshape the way we look at Africa.”
