Could telling more of our stories in the languages our people actually speak bring our cinema closer to them? BSIFF asks

African cinema needs stronger African audiences. And at BSIFF, we have been wondering whether language might be one of the bridges back to them.Because here is the thing. We are making films. More filmmakers are emerging. Technology is making production easier. Our films are travelling. We are appearing at festivals around the world. Streaming has opened doors that did not exist before. All of this is happening. But there is a question we keep coming back to: Are Africans watching African films? Not occasionally. Not because somebody sent them a link. Not because an African film happened to appear on a streaming platform. We mean watching them deliberately. Looking for them. Paying for them. Going to the cinema for them. Talking about them. Arguing about them. Waiting for the next one. Because we can make all the films in the world, but if we don’t build an audience for them, what exactly are we building? And somewhere inside that question, we kept coming back to language. Could telling more of our stories in the languages our people actually speak bring our cinema closer to them? We don’t know that language is the answer. It can’t be. There are too many other things that need fixing. But we think it is a question worth asking. And when you start looking around, there are clues everywhere. Look at what is happening around the world. Look at South Korea.Korean films and series have travelled extraordinarily far without first becoming English. They remain Korean. The language is Korean. The food is Korean. The names are Korean. The culture is Korean. And somehow, millions of people who do not speak Korean are watching. They read subtitles. They listen to dubbed versions. They enter the story. China gives us another fascinating example. In 2026, the Mandarin-language historical series Pursuit of Jade crossed 4 billion effective online plays and became one of the year’s major television phenomena. And then it travelled. It was released internationally with subtitles in 14 languages and five dubbing options, reaching audiences across 191 countries and regions. It also entered Netflix’s weekly Global Top 10 for non-English television. Now, this is interesting to us. Because the producers didn’t say: if we want the world to watch this, perhaps we should make it in English. They made it in Mandarin. They kept the language of the story and translated access to it. What if we separated those two things in African cinema too? Instead of asking: What language should I make this film in so that everybody can understand it? Those are two completely different problems. And once we started thinking about it that way, another thought appeared: The language of the story does not have to be the language of the market. But then again, why are we looking all the way to Korea and China? We have already seen something happen right here at home. *Source: graphic.com.gh — [read original](https://www.graphic.com.gh/entertainment/showbiz-news/could-telling-more-of-our-stories-in-the-languages-our-people-actually-speak-bring-our-cinema-closer-to-them-bsiff-asks.html)*