Durban FilmMart has placed “equitable coproduction” inside its 2026 industry programme. The phrase is welcome. The contracts will decide whether it means anything.
The Durban FilmMart Institute has announced an Equitable Coproduction Programme developed with experts from EAVE, the European training and development organisation. It arrives as African producers increasingly depend on partners across several countries to assemble development money, production finance, post-production and routes into international markets.
Coproduction can make a film possible. It can also reproduce the same imbalance it claims to solve.
The practical test is not whether African and international companies appear together in the credits. It is whether they carry comparable authority, risk and long-term value.
Equity is more than splitting the budget
A financing plan can look balanced while the underlying relationship is not.
An African producer may bring the story, writer, director, location, cast and years of development. A foreign partner may enter later with access to a fund, broadcaster or sales agent. If cash is the only contribution treated as valuable, the partner who unlocks the final portion of the budget can gain control far beyond the proportion of work contributed.
Equitable coproduction requires a broader accounting of value. Development labour matters. Rights secured before the partnership matter. Cultural access, research, relationships and the originating company’s reputation matter. So does the risk carried during the years when the project had no external financing.
A fair agreement should recognise these contributions before dividing ownership and revenue.
The clauses that reveal the relationship
The word “equitable” becomes measurable in a small number of contractual areas.
Copyright and intellectual property
Who owns the underlying work when production ends? Joint ownership can sound fair, but it may still leave one partner with the practical ability to approve sales, remakes or future adaptations. The contract should state what each producer owns and what decisions require consent.
Recoupment
Revenue does not simply arrive and get divided according to the headline ownership percentage. Sales fees, expenses, distribution costs, loans and investor positions are deducted in an agreed order. A producer can own part of a film on paper and receive little if placed too far down the recoupment waterfall.
Creative control
Final cut, casting, key crew, language, length and delivery decisions shape the finished film. If the African producer or director can be overruled on each of them, a formally African coproduction may lose authority over its own story.
Territorial and sales rights
The agreement should identify who controls which markets and for how long. African rights are sometimes treated as less valuable during negotiation, then handled poorly after the film is complete. The originating producer should not discover that the film is unavailable at home because those rights were bundled into a larger deal.
Credits and career value
Producer credits influence future financing. A partner who performed core producing work should not be reduced to a local service credit while a later entrant receives the status recognised by international funds and festivals.
Why this training matters now
The number of African projects built through multi-country finance is growing. The six-country production structure behind Venice winner La Maison du Vent shows both the reach such partnerships can create and the complexity attached to them.
Formal programmes are also linking African producers to specific international systems. RollCall Africa reported on Thuthuka, the South Africa-Netherlands coproduction grant, which offers a defined route between two national industries.
These opportunities can provide finance that is not available locally. The danger appears when access to that finance depends on terms African producers do not have the experience, legal support or bargaining power to challenge.
Training can narrow that gap. A producer who understands recoupment, chain of title, collection accounts and territorial licensing enters the negotiation differently from one focused only on closing the budget.
But training alone cannot make an unequal market fair. The institutions providing money must also accept agreements that leave African companies with meaningful ownership.
Europe is not the only place equity must be examined
Discussions about unequal coproduction often reduce the issue to Africa versus Europe. The same problem can exist between African countries, between a large local company and a smaller producer, or between a platform and an independent studio.
A South African company can dominate a partner from a smaller market. A well-connected producer in a capital city can extract value from a regional filmmaker. A broadcaster can describe a project as a partnership while acquiring nearly every useful right.
Equity is therefore not a nationality test. It is a power test.
The question is whether the party contributing the original creative asset retains enough control and economic participation to build from the project’s success.
What Durban FilmMart should publish afterwards
The programme will be easier to judge if Durban FilmMart follows it with practical evidence. How many projects reach agreements? Do participants obtain legal advice? What rights do the originating producers retain? Are model clauses or negotiation guides made available to the wider industry?
Case studies would be especially useful. Producers need to see not only a successful financing announcement, but how a fair relationship was structured and which clauses protected both sides.
This would move the conversation beyond good intentions. The African industry already knows that exploitation is undesirable. It needs tools for recognising it before signing.
The broader pitch economy makes that urgency clearer. As RollCall Africa’s cover story on Africa’s permanent audition cycle argues, producers are carrying more development work before financing arrives. When a partner finally offers access to money, exhaustion and urgency can weaken the producer’s negotiating position.
A fair film should create a stronger producer
The most useful definition of equitable coproduction is simple: after the film is completed, the originating producer should be better equipped to make the next one.
That means more than a festival credit. It means revenue participation, retained intellectual property, stronger professional relationships, recognised producing status and the ability to use the success as leverage.
If a coproduction gives the film an international life but leaves the African company without rights, data, revenue or decision-making power, the project may have travelled while the producer remained in place.
Durban FilmMart is right to put equity into the training room. The next step is to make it visible in the deal memo, the recoupment schedule and the rights clause. That is where the industry will learn whether the partnership was genuinely shared.
Source: Durban FilmMart Institute.
