S16 Film Festival is Building a Glorious Future for Nigerian Cinema 

The tagline on the cover of the Short, About Sarah reads: a pretentious thesis on love. It’s a cheeky warning, almost like the film is winking at you before it even begins. And true to its word, it opens with that age-old, slightly corny question—do you believe in love? From there, the film wanders through the main character’s entanglements with different women, always circling back to one constant: Sarah, the gravitational pull he can’t escape.

Rendered in soft, deliberate 2D animation, the film uses shifting characters and fleeting scenes like brushstrokes, painting the writer S.A.D. Alaka’s obsession and inquiry into what it means to love Sarah. It unfolds like a visual self-interrogation, a sort of meta-film that occasionally breaks the fourth wall, peeking out at the audience as if to ask: Are you following? Are you guilty of this too?

Experimental in form, intimate in tone, and unafraid of its own earnestness, About Sarah won the Rising Star Award at the 2025 S16 Film Festival. And it’s worth pausing on that moment. Because in celebrating this film, S16 is also marking the precedent it has set and the impact it has carried for the last five years.

One of the brightest prodigies to emerge from the festival is Dika Ofoma, an indie filmmaker whose journey began with shorts made on instinct. For the first few years, his career was steady, earnest, until 2023 shifted everything. That year, acclaimed director CJ Obasi reached out and nudged him toward the festival circuit. Then, he released A Japa Tale and screened the short at the S16 festival. It was the kind of moment that changes a filmmaker’s horizon.

From there, Ofoma’s path unfolded. One film led to another, and last year he took home the Rising Star Award for God’s Wife. His rise mirrors the powerful influence of the Surreal 16 collective—CJ Obasi, Abba Makama, and Michael Omonua—whose own films have traveled the world, screening at Sundance, Locarno, TIFF, Berlinale, Fespaco, and beyond. Their achievements have carved a kind of cinematic runway; because they’ve opened the door, filmmakers like Ofoma can step through it with less resistance, more possibility. And Ofoma is already doing that. On August 12, at the 23rd edition of Locarno’s talent development program, his film Kachifo was selected for the 2025 Open Doors Projects, earning him three awards. When you look at that moment, you can trace a straight, luminous line back to that first screening in 2023. 

S16’s momentum is beginning to crest into something beautifully global. On the last day of the 2025 edition, which happened on December 5, the collective announced a new partnership with the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, backed by the Embassy of France. It feels like watching a door swing wider for Nigerian filmmakers: five S16 alumni will travel to France next year, among them Kagbo Idhebor (2025 Audience Choice Award winner), Nneoha Ann Aligwe (2024 Audience Choice Award winner), and Uzoamaka Power. Dika Ofoma, whose journey already reads like a blueprint for what S16 can unlock, will also have his film Obi is a Boy screening in competition.

In that widening circle of possibility sits About Sarah, and its win places S.A.D. Alaka on that same trajectory of names worth paying attention to. As a debut filmmaker working in 2D animation, Alaka still stands to be slightly unsure of the full strength of his own voice, but About Sarah gives him a launchpad most filmmakers can only pray for. His selection reinforces what the earlier stories of Ofoma and the surreal16 collective already made clear: S16 wants to expand the horizons of Nigerian cinema.

While the festival doesn’t exclusively program experimental films, it has created room for work that bends form and expectation. It’s the kind of space where a meta-film like About Sarah can exist alongside grounded narratives like Ofoma’s Obi is a Boy and Uzoamaka’s Siraam. Here, filmmakers are nudged toward the edges of cinema, encouraged to redefine what a Nigerian short can be. And in a landscape that often defaults to the familiar, S16’s insistence on risk feels like its own kind of rebellion.

What makes S16’s trajectory even more compelling is the way its ambitions are now stretching beyond the festival week and into long-term infrastructure, solid, tangible things that will outlast any one edition. It feels like a natural progression: after years of elevating filmmakers and sending them onto global stages, S16 is turning inward, asking what it would take to build a home sturdy enough to nurture the next generation from the ground up. Beginning in 2026, the festival will partner with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to broadcast a short-film program nationwide. Additionally, monthly screenings with the Goethe-Institut will keep the conversation alive year-round, ensuring that S16’s influence isn’t confined to one week in December but becomes part of Lagos’ cultural rhythm.

But its most transformative ideas are definitely the S16 Film Lab and S16 Center—two projects that feel like blueprints for the future. The Film Lab will offer early-career filmmakers mentorship, resources, and community at the stage where most emerging artists slip through the cracks. And the S16 Center imagines a complete creative ecosystem under one roof, consisting of a film institute, café, film school, shop, cinema, library, and studio. 

S16 now stands at a pivotal moment. Everything that has come before, from the Rising Stars, to the festival partnerships, and the expanding alumni network, feels like a prelude. Over the next five years, as these structures rise, the festival is positioning itself as the definitive hub for Nigerian filmmakers pursuing the festival circuit. And that shift isn’t just meaningful for Nigeria; it alters the larger map of global cinema. When local communities build sustainable systems instead of depending on external validation, they create conditions where authentic voices can thrive. S16 is laying the foundation for a future where Nigerian cinema can shape the global film culture.