Wishing to expand its canvas in Africa, the Disney platform has been offering since Wednesday July 5 Kizazi Moto: Fire Generation, a series of animated science fiction short films entrusted to young creators from the continent, supported by the co-director of the Oscar-winning film Spider-Man : New-Generation.
What will Africa of the future look like? Whether they see spirits, herds of cyborg cattle or radioactive octopuses, fourteen directors from Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt have answered this question in ten episodes. of about ten minutes mixing 2D and 3D and independent of each other.
Kizazi Moto – a title taken from the Swahili phrase “Kizazi cha moto” meaning “generation of fire” – testifies to the big-eared firm’s interest in Africa.
She plans to air another sci-fi anime series soon set in a future version of Lagos, Nigeria, created in collaboration with pan-African entertainment company Kugali.
For Kizazi Moto, the artists called upon have drawn on their history and the diverse cultures of the continent, mixing myths, extraterrestrials, gods, monsters and futuristic technologies, while tackling more or less frontally climate change, colonization or even the excesses of networks. social.
In Mukudzei, for example, an influencer is thrown into a parallel reality where Zimbabwe has not been colonized, while Surf Sangoma, set in the year 2050, follows thrill-seeking surfers in the South African city of Durban, where rising waters have led to a ban on activities at sea.
Co-produced by the South African studio Triggerfish and Peter Ramsey, co-director of the Oscar-winning film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the series thus digs into the furrow of Afrofuturism, the potential of which has been demonstrated by the worldwide success of the American blockbuster from Marvel. , Black Panther.
“But it’s something we’ve never really seen before,” as the series relies on “individual creators with personal stories and authentic experiences,” Disney’s VP of Animation told AFP. EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Orion Ross, during the Annecy Festival in June.
All “were really excited about having the opportunity to express something to the world through Disney (which has nearly 160 million subscribers, editor’s note), in a way that had been up to them. then unreachable,” insisted Peter Ramsey.
According to him, American studios are already interested in the work of these directors. And, if Kizaki Moto is successful, he would like another series to be launched “with stories from ten more countries to give more creators a chance”.
Drawing a parallel between this Disney production and his Spider-Man, Peter Ramsey points out that the latter has made it possible to renew American animated blockbusters by “showing that they could have more diverse, avant-garde and experimental styles”. “What we tried to do with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was to reproduce things that had already been tested in the short films”, similar to what the creators of Kizazi Moto propose, he said. he adds. In the meantime, Disney is planning an upcoming animated adaptation of the sci-fi comic book Iwaju, which means “future” in Yoruba, from a Ugandan-Nigerian company.
