Keywords for The Children of Festivalism

Ben’Imana (2026)	Elephants in the Fog (2026)
First Feature Film of a Rwandan Director	First Feature Film of a Nepalese Director
Set in Rwanda	Set in Nepal
Attended Lim (Less Is More), La Fabrique Cinema (Cannes), Atlas Workshops, Ouaga Film Lab	Attended Asian Project Market (Busan), European Work in Progress, First Cut+
Funded by the Berlinale World Cinema Fund and Norway’s Sørfond	Funded by the Berlinale World Cinema Fund and Norway’s Sørfond
Won the TUI Care Foundation Award, satisfying NGO metrics for job creation and capacity-building in Africa	Won the EWIP Hamburg Award, satisfying European developmental outreach metrics
Co-produced by Rwanda, France, Norway, Gabon, Ivory Coast	Co-produced by Nepal, France, Norway, Germany, Brazil
French-Tunisian Editor, French Co-producer (Les Films du Bilboquet), French Distributor (MK2)	French DOP, UK/German Editor, French Composer, French Distributor (Arizona)
Won the Camera d’Or & FIPRESCI Prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival	Won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

• Both feature a middle-aged matriarch (a woman and a transgender woman) burdened with the leadership of a traumatized or marginalized community.
• Both narratives are driven by the sudden transgression of a “daughter” figure (pregnancy and disappearance) that shatters the matriarch’s control.
• Both are set in isolated and atmospheric rural villages (Rwandan hills and Thori forest) that function as cinematic rural settings.
• Both films claim localized authenticity by casting non-professionals and real survivors.
• Both are 5-nation co-productions subsidized by identical European state funds.
• Both outsource their technical work (editing, cinematography, scoring, distribution) to European professionals.

Keywords for Thought (But If You Really Want to Think)

Festivalism / Festivalization: The concept describing how international film festivals have transformed from exhibition venues into a massive institutional network that produces, finances, and affects the style of global cinema.

Miserabilism: A critical term used to describe a cinematic approach for exclusively depicting the miserable, impoverished, or traumatic side of life in developing nations. It refers to films that focus on poverty and despair because that is what foreign film festivals reward.

Trauma Commodification: The extraction of localized pain, often by casting non-actors who have survived real atrocities and repackaging it into a universally digestible cinematic product for the international market.

The “Native Informant” Filmmaker: A concept borrowed from postcolonial theory, applied to directors from the Global South who are expected to act not as autonomous artists, but as sociological translators. Their perceived role is to explain their culture’s backwardness, trauma, or politics to a Western/International audience.

Cinematic Neocolonialism: The indirect exploitation and control of the Global South’s film industries by developed countries’ funding bodies and distributors. It ensures that while the films are shot in developing nations, the economic power, distribution rights, and narrative control remain in Europe and North America.

Lab-Grown Cinema: Films that emerge not from an organic creative process, but from being excessively polished, smoothed out, and “perfected” through script labs, pitching workshops, and co-production markets.

Self-Orientalism: A process in which filmmakers from non-Western countries adopt and present “othered” or exoticized visions of their own cultures specifically to meet the expectations and funding criteria of the Western or Western-driven gaze.

Strategic Exoticism: The deliberate integration of indigenous or/and “exotic” cultural elements such as ancient rituals or tribal dynamics into a cinematic framework designed to appeal to cosmopolitan, Western/International audiences on the festival circuit.

Poverty Porn: A label for films that exploit and commodify severe destitution, urban slums, and the struggles of marginalized communities. These films create a cinematic spectacle for privileged audiences, which critics argue supports postcolonial ideologies rather than giving a real artistic viewpoint to the subjects.

Aestheticized Squalor: A subtle evolution of Poverty Porn. It specifically describes the practice of shooting devastating poverty, decay, or trauma with beautiful cinematography, which renders human suffering visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing for arthouse consumers.

NGO Aesthetics: A term used to critique films that feel as though they were directed by a humanitarian committee. It refers to projects prioritizing sociopolitical issues (like the Rwandan genocide or trans rights) and “citizen empowerment” over artistic merit, heavily influenced by the philanthropic mandates of their Western/European funders.

Staged Authenticity: The illusion of raw realism. The deliberate construction of a gritty realism that appears raw and “authentic” to Western/International audiences, even though the production was highly engineered and curated by film labs and funds.

Self-Censorship: It refers to filmmakers (deliberately or unconsciously) removing their own artistic agenda, voice, style, or integrity because they know/anticipate funding and exhibition bodies will reject them.

The Applause Echo Chamber: It refers to the psychological condition of filmmakers who, surrounded by European or Western-driven producers, PR experts, critics, and film programmers, praise how “authentic” and “important” they are, remain completely oblivious to the fact that they have become pawns of the dominant system.

Cultural Gatekeeping / Hegemony: The systemic control and power exercised by festival programmers, development labs, funding bodies, and co-production markets over the definition, validation, and global distribution of what is considered “important” World Cinema. It serves to dictate the taxonomy of cinema and decide what constitutes a “good” film, thereby shaping the careers and output of filmmakers, especially from the Global South.

The Festival Gaze: It refers to the specific, culturally conditioned lens through which festival juries, critics, and audiences view world cinema, and it demands that films conform to the moral understanding and aesthetic tastes of mostly Western-driven institutions.

Soft Power Philanthropy: The strategic use of film funds and grants (often state-backed) as a form of cultural diplomacy. While designed to “rescue”, “help” or “support” developing filmmakers, it subtly imposes ideological agendas and solidifies the funder’s status as a global cultural savior.

World Cinema as a Genre: The critical perspective that “World Cinema” is not an actual geographical category, but a constructed marketing label. It combines non-Hollywood or non-European films into a single, marginalized bucket to fit the exoticized or political expectations of the Western-driven worldview.

Commodified Auto-Ethnography: A practice where filmmakers document their own marginalized communities or personal traumas, not for internal reflection, but deliberately packaging their identity as a niche or exotic product for the global arthouse market and festivals.

Boutique Dissidence: The adoption of a political “dissident” or “rebel” or “activist” identity by a new generation of filmmakers, presented in a safe dose that never disturbs Western-driven liberal sensibilities, but rather serves to soothe their conscience.

The Grant-Preneur: A new breed of director who positions themselves as a fundraiser rather than an artist. These individuals adapt (or have to adapt) their projects to fit the trending themes of European funds in any given year (the migrant crisis one year, climate change the next, and identity politics after that).

Transnational Orphans / Diaspora Auteurs: Directors who make “realistic” films about poverty, war, or political crises in their home countries but have actually been living in European capitals like Paris, Berlin, or London for years. They have long severed their ties with the reality they depict and are integrated into the cultural ecosystem they live in.

Cookie-Cutter Arthouse: A term for the standardized and formulaic “festival films” that emerge from international script labs, characterized by homogenized themes and visual languages that lack real distinctiveness.

Algorithmic Arthouse: The phenomenon where independent cinema devolves into its own predictable algorithm, ironically mirroring the “formulaic” nature it criticizes in box-office blockbusters. It refers to the mechanical application of a style not as artistic expression, but as a guaranteed formula for festival acceptance.

The Botanical Garden Illusion: The institutional reality is that international film festivals are no longer “wild ecosystems” of global cinema, but rather curated botanical gardens. Only safe, pruned, and aesthetically pleasing “exotic” plants (films) that fit their tastes are allowed to bloom, while real independent cinema is kept out.

Zero-Risk Bureaucracy: The reality of modern film funding. Film funds and festival boards act as bureaucratic institutions that abhor financial and artistic risk. They support safe and formulaic projects over radical cinematic voices.

Eurocentric Universalism: The assumption within the festival circuit that Western-driven narrative structures and moral conclusions are “universal” and objectively superior, while non-Western traditions are viewed as “flawed” unless they adapt.

Top-Down Universalism: It refers to a concept of universality that ignores construction from the local through long historical processes. Instead, it relies on pseudo-universalism, which tries to shape the local with a popular and dominant globalized perspective, disrupting the organic evolution of universalism.

Globalized Authenticity: Real local (and potentially universal) cinema forces Western/International audiences, as it refuses to explain itself, translate its cultural codes, or offer moral comfort. As a result, it is systematically rejected by festival gatekeepers who prioritize audience accessibility. Instead, they present a globalized worldview disguised as universality.

And lastly, here is my contribution to the literature (a new term by Mirac Atabey):

The Counter-Exemplar Blackout: It refers to the systemic erasure and invisibility of alternative success stories outside the festival and market matrix. Because independent filmmakers face a complete blackout of self-sustained counter-models, they are psychologically blinded to any path other than the festival, funding, industry, or market ecosystems.

Even when they attempt to draw inspiration from historical cinematic developments such as the New Waves or guerrilla movements of the 60s and 70s, they realize that festival and fund bureaucracy and digital streaming platforms have rendered those old survival tactics obsolete. Looking outside the system shows only black emptiness, and forces them to believe that institutional and market conformity is the only light available. Deprived of viable counter-exemplars, filmmakers fall into learned helplessness and are convinced that defying institutional and market gatekeepers is professional suicide.

Only already established filmmakers break free from this path, but even then, they still support the same ecosystems. Moreover, festivals scatter a few alternative debut films in their side sections (without competition) to create a deceptive illusion of “taking risks”, but the fact is that most of these films are not from the Global South. The system does not grant these regions the freedom to make art, but relegates them to the role of packaging their own traumas.

Paradoxically, this absolute darkness might be the exact trigger needed for filmmakers to stop looking for existing paths and finally find their own radical methods of cinematic survival. It might be a necessary catalyst. Ignoring both contemporary role models and the romantic illusions of past rebellions, filmmakers are forced into a space where innovation, from writing to distribution, is the only option left. Perhaps this blackout could be the exact break needed to force the explosive invention of a new and unpredictable paradigm for the art of the cinema.