Allocating financial investment towards education is very crucial in my family as education is important and is believed to bring a great return in the future; So my parents did not spare anything when it came to my education said Sarah Ntabadde an Alumni of AFDA film school in Capetown. This was what Sarah’s family had in mind as they sent her to pursue her undergraduate program in South Africa.
“Initially, all the efforts and hard work put into my studies paid off as I landed Internships in South Africa working within the Filming and sound department. My immediate positive employment opportunities paid off well enough that I believed I had acquired quite a bit of experience that I believed would be great and have a positive impact on my home country, she added. Like many students, she left for her home country to pursue a career in film in hopes of putting Ugandan voices on the map.
The Ugandan Film industry is still young and holds great potential. Uganda commonly referred to as the pearl of Africa is located in eastern Africa bordering Kenya Uganda and Rwanda. The country has so much to offer culturally and the filmmakers in the country have been working hard to raise the voices of Ugandan people through their creative industry.
As Sarah explains, though there is a great zeal to grow the film industry there is still little to no motivation to only pursue film as she got a position as a Sound technician in a major film company that did not pay at all. Film production is an expensive endeavor and though she explains her journey in producing her own small documentaries she also highlighted the difficulties that came with working and producing on her own. The film industry in Uganda is one that has great potential for growth and in the past 10 years seen great recognition for its achievements such as the Movie titled The Girl in the Yellow Jumper directed by, Loukman Ali that was aired on Netflix and gained a lot of recognition in the region.
Experts in the field have been quoted highlighting funding as one of the main challenges facing the industry. However, in the past 10 years, International companies like Netflix and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development have come out in support of the industry, there is also growing zeal and passion to tell the Uganda story through the many film students and graduates like Sarah Ntabadde.
