Ada Cotton travels to Kigali Cine Junction

When Ada Cotton’s film Love in A Minor was selected for Kigali Cine-Junction Film Festival in August 2024, we were delighted to help her travel to experience the festival for herself.

Kigali claims to be the cinema capital of Africa, and the festival has an ambition to be a place where audiences and professionals converge to explore the aesthetics in cinema.

London-based French-Rwandese Writer/Director, Ada sent us this report back.

" I had the honour to attend the second edition of the Kigali Cine-Junction Film Festival taking place 1st to 4th August 2024. This has been an incredible experience on a professional and personal level!

The festival took place in Kigali, in between the iconic and historical cinema Cine-Mayaka, recently refurbished and located at the heart of Nyamirambo and Biryogo, a buzzing neighbourhood in the capital.

Part of the film programme, including both opening and closing ceremonies, took place at the Car-free-zone, in the city centre. The audience are able to enjoy old-school classic and independent films, screened on a huge inflatable screen from over one hundred armchairs placed in the middle of this urban business quarter.

My short film Love In A Minor was screened in Kigali, as part of the ‘Diaspora Voices’ screening, at Cine-Mayaka. The film was well received and I had the opportunity to exchange with the audience thanks to the Q+A organised by the festival afterwards. The audience was really diverse and included people of all ages, nationalities, locals as well as people who had travelled from neighbouring countries for the occasion. The theme of Black Aesthetics for this festival’s edition brought up some interesting conversations during Q+As and other events.

I attended some masterclasses and social events taking place at Moshions, an upcoming fashion brand and hub for young creatives in Rwanda. This was also great to network with filmmakers, producers, actors, festival organisers and other professionals from film industry and other creatives.

Alongside coverage coverage from TV5 monde and France 24, I also had the chance to take part in an interview with Imigani, a Rwandese media platform which focusses on portraying artists from the African diaspora, exposing their cultural practice to the world. The content will be published on social media this autumn.

Having the chance to attend the festival in person really made a difference, as I was able to connect with people and the audience directly. This makes it a lot easier to initiate further partnerships and cross-cultural creative collaborations - which will be extremely helpful to develop my next film projects in the future.

The hospitality and the quality of the events overall was very impressive and beyond expected. I felt very welcome and supported during my stay. I would recommend anyone to attend and take part in this festival which, I believe, has the potential to become an A list festival in the East African region. "

Ada travelled to Kigali with support from a discretionary Travel Grant offered jointly by the British Council and BFI.

About Ada

After an MA in Ethnomusicology, Ada worked as a documentary filmmaker and as a producer for several award winning independent docu-fiction and narrative feature films.

Her documentary African Sewing Club filmed in Rwanda, was exhibited at the Pavilion Museum in Brighton, and screened at BFI and on BBC World Africa, in 2016. Ada is an alumni of the one year bursary mentoring programme at Screen Arts Institute/BFI in 2016-2017.

In 2019, she co-directed Progress (1968), an outdoor visual installation about the socio-political movements from 1968 from the perspective of the African diaspora, in collaboration with a senior archivist, Etienne Joseph. It was selected amongst the finalists at the Aesthetica Art Prize 2023 and awarded Best Film in Fine Arts Discipline at Black Berlin International Cinema Berlin 2023.

Her first narrative short film Love in A Minor premiered at BIFA-qualifying Tweetfest 2023 and was semi-Finalist at BIFA-qualifying Kino Fest 2023, in London before its selection at Kigali.

Alongside her work in film, Ada’s debut short play ’Bubble Killer’ was showcased at the Southwark Playhouse, London in 2022 and at the Blue Elephant Theatre, London in 2023.

She is also a member of the Black Writers Collective at the Southwark Playhouse, London and has been a guest Speaker at Goldsmiths' College for the MA in Visual Anthropology since August 2022.