Alternativa Film Festival opens submissions for Kenyan filmmakers

Alternativa Film Festival, the Global South film festival founded and supported by inDrive, opened submissions for its first African edition.

For its fourth edition, the festival welcomes feature films from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Short film submissions are open exclusively to filmmakers from Africa, the festival’s focus region for 2027. All entries must have been completed after 1 January 2026.

Alternativa Film Festival offers $120,000 (Ksh. 15.5m) in prize money across seven awards.

Three of these – the $20,000 (Ksh. 2.5m) Focus Award and the two $10,000 (Ksh. 1.3m) Short Film Awards – are reserved for African filmmakers, who are also eligible for the other prizes.

Directors of films selected for the Competition will be invited to attend the festival and its awards ceremony, with travel and accommodation covered by Alternativa Film Festival.

The festival will take place in late 2027, with the host country, city and exact dates still to be announced.

The call for entries closes on 1 March 2027.

Taking Global South films beyond festivals

Alternativa champions impact-driven cinema from the Global South, which is home to roughly five of every six people in the world but still under-represented onscreen.

Alternativa Distribution launched earlier this year, using a fair, non-profit distribution model that reinvests in filmmakers and local film industries.

The label pays an upfront minimum guarantee for non-theatrical rights, funds subtitling and dubbing, and shares revenue after recouping direct distribution costs.

“Exceptional filmmaking can come from anywhere, but access to international audiences is still hindered by a deeply unequal system,” says Arsen Tomsky, founder and CEO of inDrive, the global mobility company behind Alternativa. “Alternativa Distribution was created to challenge that imbalance.”

Alternativa Distribution’s growing catalogue includes Nepal’s 2027 Oscar entry Elephants in the Fog (Cannes 2026: Un Certain Regard Jury Prize) as well as co-productions involving Afghanistan (No Good Men: Berlinale 2026 opening film), Malaysia (Lost Land: Venice 2025 Orizzonti Special Jury Prize), and Tunisia (2024 Oscar nominee Four Daughters). The catalogue also includes five other films from previous editions of Alternativa Film Festival.

Films selected for the 2027 edition may also be considered for Alternativa Distribution’s catalogue.

As a nomadic event, Alternativa Film Festival moves to a new region with each edition. Its journey began in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2023, followed by Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2024, and Medellín, Colombia, in 2026.

The Medellín edition received 1,831 submissions from 55 countries and was the festival’s largest to date, attracting 11,000 attendees, welcoming 107 international guests, and bringing together more than 60 partners.

“With each edition, Alternativa Film Festival grows,” says Liza Surganova, Head of Alternativa. “Not only in reach and scale, but also in the connections it creates and the opportunities it opens up for filmmakers.

“As we prepare to bring the festival to Africa for the first time, we want to build on everything we’ve achieved so far, making this edition our biggest and boldest yet while introducing new initiatives for our community.

“Africa is home to an extraordinary diversity of cultures, perspectives, and cinematic voices, and we believe this new chapter will deepen our understanding of what transformative cinema can be and help us forge valuable new connections. We invite filmmakers from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to join us on this journey and share their visions with us.’

Alternativa 2027 will include public screenings, discussions, and other events designed to spark dialogue around the social issues explored in the films.

The festival will wrap up with an awards ceremony, recognising outstanding films that combine artistic excellence with the potential to drive meaningful social change.

Alternativa also builds community through Industry Days, its professional programme connecting filmmakers, producers, industry experts, and social impact leaders from across the Global South.

Elise Shick, a Malaysian producer of ‘’Lost Land, which won the Nativa Award at Alternativa 2026 shares an example of this.

“Here (Alternativa), we have already formed a co-production project involving nine countries. We hope to screen it as the opening film of the next Alternativa Film Festival in Africa.”

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