African filmmakers will have access to $40,000 in dedicated prize money at the 2027 edition of the Alternativa Film Festival, which is expanding to the continent for the first time.
The Global South-focused festival, founded and supported by technology company inDrive, has opened submissions for its fourth edition, inviting feature films from Africa, Asia and Latin America, while restricting short film entries to African filmmakers.
The festival is offering a total of $120,000 across seven awards, with three prizes reserved exclusively for African filmmakers: a $20,000 Focus Award and two Short Film Awards worth $10,000 each.
African filmmakers will also be eligible for the other awards.
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The organisers said all submitted films must have been produced after January 1, 2026, while the call for entries will close on March 1, 2027.
Directors of films selected for the competition will be invited to attend the festival and awards ceremony, with Alternativa covering their travel and accommodation expenses.
The festival is scheduled to hold in late 2027, although the host country, city and exact dates are yet to be announced.
The Head of Alternativa, Liza Surganova, said the expansion to Africa would build on the festival’s growing reach and create more opportunities for filmmakers.
“With each edition, Alternativa Film Festival grows,” Surganova said.
“Not only in reach and scale, but also in the connections it creates and the opportunities it opens up for filmmakers.”
She said the organisers wanted the African edition to be their “biggest and boldest yet”, with new initiatives for the festival’s community.
“As we prepare to bring the festival to Africa for the first time, we want to build on everything we've achieved so far, making this edition our biggest and boldest yet while introducing new initiatives for our community,” she said.
Surganova described Africa as a continent with “an extraordinary diversity of cultures, perspectives, and cinematic voices”, adding that the festival hoped to deepen its understanding of transformative cinema and establish new connections.
“We invite filmmakers from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to join us on this journey and share their visions with us,” she said.
Alternativa champions impact-driven cinema from the Global South, a region home to roughly five out of every six people globally but which the organisers say remains under-represented on screen.
The 2027 edition will feature public screenings, discussions and other activities aimed at encouraging dialogue on social issues explored in the selected films. The programme will conclude with an awards ceremony recognising films that combine artistic excellence with the potential to drive meaningful social change.
The festival’s expansion follows its previous editions in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2023; Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2024; and Medellín, Colombia, in 2026.
The Medellín edition received 1,831 submissions from 55 countries, attracted 11,000 attendees, hosted 107 international guests and brought together more than 60 partners.
Meanwhile, Alternativa Distribution, launched earlier in 2026, is using a non-profit distribution model designed to reinvest in filmmakers and local film industries.
The platform provides an upfront minimum guarantee for non-theatrical rights, funds subtitling and dubbing, and shares revenue after recovering direct distribution costs.
inDrive Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Arsen Tomsky, said the initiative was established to address inequalities in access to international audiences.
“Exceptional filmmaking can come from anywhere, but access to international audiences is still hindered by a deeply unequal system. Alternativa Distribution was created to challenge that imbalance,” Tomsky said.
Its catalogue includes Nepal’s 2027 Oscar entry, Elephants in the Fog, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2026; Afghanistan’s No Good Men, the opening film of Berlinale 2026; Malaysia’s Lost Land, winner of the Orizzonti Special Jury Prize at Venice 2025; and Tunisia’s Oscar-nominated Four Daughters.
The catalogue also features five other films from previous editions of the Alternativa Film Festival.
The organisers said films selected for the 2027 festival could also be considered for inclusion in the distribution catalogue.
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