Cameroonian filmmaker Nkanya Nkya added another string to his bow by becoming the mayor of the municipal executive of Ako commune in the North West of Cameroon. A new life that does not take him away from his first love which is cinema.
At the beginning of January 2021, the filmmaker was installed as mayor of the commune of Ako in the North West Cameroon. This installation comes one year after he won the elections in this commune in February 2020. The Covid19 having put everything at half-mast in the meantime. Good news but not a surprise for this 38 years old man, so the rallying and conciliator side of him is well known in the local film industry. A news that quickly makes the rounds in Cameroon and it is not every day that we see a filmmaker occupying this type of function.
I am a director, before becoming mayor I was already a director and I will remain one after the mayor’s office.
With several films to his credit as an actor, director and producer, this new position does not definitively exclude him from the world of cinema, as he reveals in an interview with our colleagues at Culture Ebene : “I am a director, before becoming mayor, I was already a director and I will remain one after the mayor’s office“. On the contrary, this new position will certainly help him to lobby and work harder to set up a project that is dear to him and which he never ceases to defend wherever he goes: a municipality, a cinema. He had made it his mantra during the forum of Cameroonian cinema held during the 24th edition of Ecrans Noirs.
Although he has always been passionate about cinema, it was at the age of 25 that the flame of the 7th art was lit in this young man from the Donga-Mantung department in the North-West of Cameroon. He then decided to stop his studies in Anthropology at the University of Yaounde I and to fully embark on a career in cinema. Nkanya took his first steps on a movie set in 2008 with Seaside Movies which is a production structure based in Limbe. With them, he played the lead role in the film Becky Diana and then a secondary role in The Walking Stick. He then decided to train at the LCC International University of Lithuania to develop his talent. In 2010 after his studies, he played a role in the play “The Crucible” produced by LCC International University in Lithuania. He continued with the university’s theatre company but was not known to the Cameroonian public until he surfaced with Blockbuster The Africanguest, his first project as a producer, shot between Colorado in the USA and Cameroon.
In 2014, he was the very first English-speaking Cameroonian to receive the prize for best actor at the Ecrans Noirs. An award that will literally make this festival his home as he will win many more trophies afterwards. From 2012 to 2016, in 4 years, the young director wrote several scripts and produced 04 films The African Guest, Viri, Nightfall, Life Point. Nightfall, whose script he wrote with Karl Safindah, was directed by Anurin Nwunembom and won the prize for Best Cameroonian Feature Film at the Yaounde Ecrans Noirs Festival in 2015. He also co-produced the film Woman for Goretti Etchu-Egbe and is second team director on “Ben & Ara (2015) directed by Nnegest Likké which received several awards around the world. In 2018, Nkanya receives six awards at the Golden Awards Africa in Ghana.
Beyond the film sets he decided to set up a programme called “The Script Workshop” aimed at providing Cameroonian scriptwriters with the basic tools and techniques of scriptwriting. An initiative that did not come about by chance. In 2016 during the Ecrans Noirs festival in Cameroon the prize for the best Cameroonian feature film is not awarded, and in 2019 it is the turn of the prize for the best male interpretation not to be awarded. The director concludes that this is certainly due to the weakness of the screenplays. For him, scriptwriting is crucial and is an important prerequisite for a successful film. It should therefore not be done in haste. The programme therefore aims to raise the level of filmmaking in Cameroon.
In 2020, Nkanya is participating in the double legislative and municipal elections of February 9 in Cameroon despite the troubled security conditions prevailing in the two regions of North West and South West. He ran for mayor of Ako and was elected. Unfortunately with the Covid pandemic, his nomination was postponed. But this did not prevent him from starting to work in his commune and it was from surely there that his project to ensure that every commune in Cameroon has a cinema was born. This would be an unparalleled opportunity for Cameroonian producers and directors who would thus have a little over 200 cinemas to screen their works throughout the country.
We cannot talk about Nkanya Nkwai without mentioning Saving Mbango which remains for us his best work. A feature-length film he directed, produced by Stéphanie Tum with Godisz Fungwa and Laura Onyama in the lead roles. A film like we would like to see every day, a romantic drama that makes you really believe in love beyond all odds. The film is currently available on Amazone Prime. If we don’t have an idea of his next film yet, we know that he is currently working seriously for the development of his commune and may be coming out of there with a political thriller that will be inspired by the complex socio-political reality of Cameroon.
Lydie Pierre Nsakamo
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