AI Filmmaking Masterclass at AFRIFF 2026?

The African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) is no stranger to receiving biting commentary. In fact, as a critic, I have written a couple of those commentaries. As expected, these commentaries haven’t made the world class festival, now in its 15 edition, distance  itself from infuriating acts. Rather, these commentaries seem to embolden it. Now, ahead of its 2026 edition, the festival has announced a list of masterclasses. Femi Adebayo, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Hilda Dokubo, Esther Kemi Gbadamosi, Kirby Griffin, and others will be leading these masterclasses. One, out of these masterclasses, has particularly angered Nigerians about its use to an industry populated with filmmakers who still fumble basic storytelling principles. This masterclass led by Obinna Okerekeocha, Precious Eboh Okiya, Faustina Okomayin, and Afam Nwaobili will “explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the craft of cinema.” Attention, as communicated by AFRIFF, will be placed on “the creative and ethical questions this technology raises for storytelling on the continent.” 

Tagged an AI Filmmaking Workshop, this debut masterclass is AFRIFF’s partnership with Okerekeocha’s Naija Artificial Intelligence Film Festival (NAIFF). Two years ago, Okerekeocha’s NAIFF was launched and has hitherto provided space for AI-centric conversations, community, filmmakers, films, and a festival which is continually expanding. In 2025, Niyi Akinmolayan’s Colours of Fire had its theatrical release, drowned by the megastars Funke Akindele and Toyin Abraham, thoughts about the film were, understandably, scanty. But, its arrival on Netflix, with its attendant accessibility for all, meant thoughts were much and  they weren’t necessarily coddling. If Akinmolayan, one of the commercially successful Nollywood mainstream filmmakers could make a dull AI-assisted film with his years of experience and resources, what can be said of the less experienced hands and minds? The meteoric rising and projected $26 billion microdramas phenomenon is worth thinking about. Global financially-heavy companies are eyeing and mining the continent for stories. African-centric platforms like Oma Areh and Elijah Affi’s Digital Creator Africa Academy are preparing the continent for this new age of storytelling and media consumption. The question: how does the African film landscape prepare itself for this inevitable AI incursion into its industry? 

The answer to this is the berated masterclass. Okerekeocha started by articulating an important point: If you’re ignorant about the craft of storytelling, AI-assisted filmmaking will only magnify your incompetence. A bad filmmaker is a bad one irrespective of being a traditional or AI filmmaker. The inability to understand the craft and process of storytelling results in bad and dull films and stories. The implied meaning is that any filmmaker adopting AI into their filmmaking process should possess an intimate understanding of the craft and art of storytelling. “It’s not about prompting but understanding the craft and process of storytelling. Teaching the AI Filmmaking Masterclass is about making filmmakers understand the existence of the technology and its place and importance to their filmmaking process,” the filmmaker expressed. 

For Nigerian film critic Remi Akinwande pushback against the masterclass and technology isn’t a snobbish attitude towards technology and its potential usefulness for cinema. In fact, despite his disdain for “the silicon valley’s African offsprings,” he believes in technological progress. “That being said, I’m not taking arms against qualitative output nor the indistinguishability it might wrought, I’m on the side of anthropocentrism, and by extension the preservation of human labour in a world that is all too eager to defer to the whims of automation.” Akinwande’s response mirrors that of younger filmmakers who have complained about being exploited and unemployed. Nigerian filmmaker and curator, Olohije Oyakhire opined we’ve far more pressing issues than AI filmmaking. She’s against Gen AI because of the boredom and loss of humanity it can potentially introduce into outsourced art. “Also all these LLMSare trained on foreign input, if we use AI to do our writing or acting, it’ll produce stories that do not have the unique Nigerian experience. I know people will say you can modify it but I just cannot believe in an industry where the fact that you can conjure something up in your brain is not seen as the be all,” she articulated. 

The disinterest against AI-assisted cinema and storytelling hinges on preserving the innovative and non-monotonous nature of cinema. What makes cinema and art beautiful and entrapping is its inventiveness. A filmmaker’s ability to capture quotidian experiences and stories in new language, tone, and framing make them memorable. But, with AI and especially with Nollywood’s notoriety for stale and hole-ridden films, this tendency for inventive cinema is even more at a bad place. For Akinwande, we care for cinema due to the “ingenuity of human thought and the labour that is required to manifest that thought.” This has been threatened by the underlying philosophy of AI filmmaking. “AI filmmaking in the error-laden Nigerian film industry is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are struggling to canonize and schematize our cinema already despite how lucrative our industry is,” the critic said. Importantly, we are depleting the barrier of entry by platforming AI-centric masterclasses. “Filmmaking should be difficult and collaborative. Yes, it will adjust to the technological air du temps and maybe it can allow for minimal interventions (if we want to be diplomatic) but it can’t be solely motivated by the pathological need for absolute efficiency and speed.”

Globally, AI is being timidly accepted by international filmmakers with AI-assisted films being made. If Nigerian filmmakers refuse to learn it, we risk being left behind while the rest of the world defines what Al African film looks like? Akinwande argued that there’s nothing wrong with being left behind as the future has always been unevenly distributed. “We should respond with unequivocal resistance if we care about the arts — yes, we want to circumvent the tedium and the resources spent but what we are facing right now is an existential problem. Let it be loudly asserted that its introduction is merely a hyper-capitalistic stratagem, computational farce, and a brazen display of insatiable avarice and fear-mongering about an illusory future where artistic integrity is ceded to the binary cognition of the machine.”

AI filmmaking is, globally, disrupting traditional filmmaking due to funding concerns. Although the former hasn’t chased away the latter, there’s growing concerns and reluctance to accept AI-assisted films by audiences, studios, and industries. For Okerekeocha, this doesn’t signal an end to traditional filmmaking as it will continually be relevant as it’s the craft of traditional filmmaking (cinematography, storytelling, worldbuilding, performance, and all) that’s carried over into AI filmmaking. International filmmakers, like James Cameroon, have suggested the unsustainability of heavy budget productions hence the massive experimentation of AI filmmaking. “There has to be a way to make things competitive from a price valuation point and perspective. The question is: how do we introduce cost reduction while maintaining storytelling? VFX, for instance, which is time consuming and expensive, is a place to cut prices. This isn’t to suggest that VFX artists should lose their jobs, rather we’re saying AI filmmaking helps reduce finances.” 

In Okerekeocha’s analysis, for the VFX artists this opens an opportunity to learn the craft and process of applying AI to their workflow. This is important because filmmaking, like other industries, evolve with technology. Editors are using it to clean sounds, colour grade, and other editing processes. With design, AI processes have been incorporated into photoshop. Additionally, the AI advocate sees AI filmmaking as a democratization of filmmaking. Young Nigerian and African filmmakers with limited funding options can adopt the technology to make their films. “Filmmaking is expensive. What we’re saying is this: money shouldn’t be a barrier to storytelling. A trained AI filmmaker, with access to the internet and AI tools should be able to visualize their stories and bring them to life.” 

Ultimately, as Okerekeocha mentioned, the audiences aren’t keen about what genre and format a film is being told in. Data, from China, shows that over 80 percent of microdramas being created and watched are AI created. This paints a picture of the audience being less infatuated in what was used in making a film but the entertainment value they derive from it. “It’s left for filmmakers to understand the range of assets available to them in telling stories. With the entire stages of film producing, AI is there to assist the filmmaker as it allows things done faster and effectively.”

Undoubtedly, AI filmmaking is here to stay. And, in an industry where majority filmmakers still fumbles rudimentary storytelling principles,  conversation around AI filmmaking should be a balance of insisting on an adept understanding of storytelling and filmmaking principles and, maybe, reluctantly, how AI can accentuate that process.