The call for the 5th edition of the Authentica Series Lab is now open!
AuthenticA Series Lab is a unique six-month programme for African episodic screenwriters to develop their original stories, of all genres, in episodic form. The outcome of the programme is that each participant will deliver a pitch deck and a pilot episode script. The rights of the material developed through the programme will remain with each writer.
AuthenticA is presented in partnership with the Realness Institute, a South Africa based non-profit organisation, which aims to empower Africans to tell their stories from an unapologetically African point of view; and with the support of Series Mania Forum and Canada Media Fund.
This six-month programme comprises a combination of online and in-person sessions:
- Residency in Ethiopia – 17 to 25 September 2026
- Work from home with weekly online meetings – 25 September to 12 December 2026
- Break – 15 December 2026 to 2 January 2027
- Work from home with weekly online meetings – 5 to 14 January 2027
- Residency in Switzerland – 19 January to 19 March 2027
- Pitch at Series Mania – March 2027
authentica fellows 2026-2027
Lateefah Mayaki (Nigeria)
Lateefah Mayaki is a writer, director and cinematographer based in Lagos, working at the intersection ofdocumentary and fiction. She is also a multimedia journalist whose practice is rooted in close, lived observation of Lagos: its markets, street economies, water bodies and people.
She co-directed the experimental documentary ‘Fluid Lagos’, which screened at DOK Leipzig, Carthageand other international festivals, and was director of photography on ‘Angel in the Stone’, selected for the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards 2025. She wrote the prison drama ‘Whispered Hope’, selected for the Homevida 2024 cohort, and wrote and directed ‘The World of the Lost’, a short film shot entirely innorthern Nigeria. Her documentary ‘A Feel of Freedom’, funded through the Docubox and Why Foundation collaboration, premiered at the iREP International Documentary Film Festival.
She is a StoryMi Academy Documentary Fellow, a NEWF Female Cinematography Lab Fellow, an Afrisos Fellow, and was one of four Nigerian filmmakers selected for Sunny Side of the Doc 2025.
Lindsey Addawoo (Ghana/Canada)
Lindsey Addawoo is an award-winning writer and filmmaker from the Greater Toronto Area. Her work islargely in the realm of drama and genre, exploring themes of resilience and triumph in the face of exploitation. Her work has screened at over 30 film festivals across the world.
Her first short film, Queen of Hearts, won the 2017 Inside Out Film Festival BravoFACT $50,000 pitchaward. She co-wrote Promise Me (2020), a short film which won the Standout Short Film Writer Awardat Reelworld Film Festival and two Golden Sheaf Awards at Yorkton Film Festival.
Her TV writing credits include CBC's Coroner and The Legacy Awards, Robyn Hood (Global TV), and XavierRiddle and the Secret Museum (PBS Kids), the latter of which earned her a Canadian ScreenAward-nomination for Best Writing in Animation.
She is an alumna of BIPOC TV & Film's inaugural Episodic Drama Writers' Lab and Showrunner Bootcamp, and was later inducted into the 2022 Warner Bros. Discovery Access x Canadian Academy WritersProgram. She was also a recipient of the Rogers-Black Screen Office Script Development Fund.
Lindsey is currently in development for several original projects under her production company, WooDooPictures. Most other days, she can be found chasing her chaotic shih-poo, Hodor.
Phumi Morare (South Africa)
Phumi Morare is a South African writer/director whose work explores identity, inheritance, and the quietresilience of Black women. Her short film Lakutshon’ Ilanga (When The Sun Sets) was shortlisted for an Academy Award, won an NAACP Image Award and a Student Academy Award, and was acquired by HBO Max for U.S. distribution. Her latest short, Why The Cattle Wait, developed through the Tribeca X Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program and Berlinale Talents Durban, won a SAFTA. She holds an MFA in FilmDirecting from Chapman University and has worked at Plan B Entertainment and Bona Fide Productions(‘Little Miss Sunshine’). She is the founder of Zarafa Pictures, a boutique media company building a slateof prestige, African cultural assets. Phumi is represented by Echo Lake Entertainment who are based in Los Angeles.
Sahndra Fon Dufe (Cameroon/USA)
Sahndra Fon Dufe is a Cameroonian-born writer, filmmaker, author, actress, and cultural entrepreneurwhose work explores identity, history, culture, and human connection. A Commonwealth ofNations-recognized author, she became the youngest published author from Cameroon in 2014 and wasnominated for Most Promising Actress at the African Movie Academy Awards the same year.
She is the creator of the YEFON trilogy, an Amazon #1 bestselling historical fiction and children's bookseries used in select schools in Cameroon and soon Barbados. A postgraduate DIPES II student at the University of Yaoundé recently used the novel as the basis for their research. With an academicbackground in Law and Journalism and a graduate degree from the New York Film Academy, Sahndra brings over eighteen years of experience across storytelling, screenwriting, publishing, media, and creative entrepreneurship.
Her writing credits include Unconditional Love and Fifteen Wives. Her film and television credits includeMadame Secretary (CBS), Mind of a Man (GSN), The Forgiven, Black November, One Night in Vegas(Prime Video), and Fifteen Wives.
Sahndra is the Founder of African Pictures International, Owner and Editor in Chief of Black Film Wire,and Director of Outreach and Strategic Engagement for the Silicon Valley African Film Festival. She is a recipient of California State Legislature Assembly Certificates of Recognition for leadership and service(2024, 2025). A committed advocate for Africa's creative infrastructure, her work spans the UnitedStates, Cameroon, Nigeria, and the Caribbean, supporting literacy, education, and opportunity throughAfrican Pictures International's impact programs, including Kiven Creative Futures Lab, acapacity-building platform for the next generation of African screen professionals.
On their story development journey, they are accompanied by Selina Ukwuoma (Director of Writing Programmes), Dr. Mehret Mandefro (Director of Producing and Showrunning).
DIRECTOR OF WRITING PROGRAMMES
Selina Ukwuoma is an accomplished freelance script consultant. She began her career at literary agency Curtis Brown working on theatre, film and television projects. She has since gone on to advise on award-winning indies as well as consulting for production companies and designing and running development initiatives such as Realness Screenwriters’ Residency and the Film Prize of the Robert Bosch Foundation. Selina teaches screenwriting at the UK’s National Film and Television School and regularly mentors and leads workshops at film festivals.
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCING AND SHOWRUNNING
Dr. Mehret Mandefro draws on her interdisciplinary training as a physician and anthropologist to create compelling narratives she calls "visual medicine." She co-founded the independent media production companies Truth Aid in New York and Area 51 Films in Ethiopia, and was most recently the Executive Producer of Ethiopia’s largest general entertainment channel Kana Television. Mehret also coordinates Ethiopia Creates, a multidisciplinary effort dedicated to strengthening Ethiopia's creative economy, and is co-founder of Realness Institute, which aims to build the film and television industry across Africa.
FUNDING
Each participant receives a monthly stipend of 1000 EUR for the duration of the programme. This is to help cover living expenses as they focus on developing their concept while being mentored. All travel and accommodation for the South African, Swiss and Series Mania legs of the programme will be covered by AuthenticA. Selected participants shall arrange and cover the costs of their visas and travel insurance.
ELIGIBILITY
- Open to all African nationals
- Age requirement: 21+
- Writers with experience in either film or television
- If the writer is part of a writing team, only the applicant will be able to participate if selected
- Story Concept must be set in Africa
- The language of the story must be in English or French and/or a local language
- The programme will be delivered in English, therefore applicants must be able to speak and write in English
- Open to all genres
- No producer / production company attachment necessary
- Willing to commit to 7 days in person in South Africa, 2 months in Switzerland, and attend the online sessions from home
APPLY
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SUPPORTERS
DISCOVER OUR ALUMNI PROJECTS DEVELOPED DURING AUTHENTICA
If you would like to learn more about any of these projects or where they stand today - you can reach out to the writers directly!
AUTHENTICA PROJECTS 2026
Logline: In 1999 Sudan, a young Egyptian aid worker desperate to be useful joins a humanitarian mission run on politics, ego, and a permanently jammed fax machine, determined to film the world’s most urgent stories, until her first success teaches her that buried truths travel fastest, like the aid actually reaching people is being smuggled by a fixer no one officially trusts.
Logline: When relentless Hawi tracks her soulmate Panda into a deadly militant camp to bring him home, they must choose between a forbidden radical love and the bloody pursuit of a promised land.
Joladé Olusanya
Nigeria / UK, writer, director
Project: KID: The Hogan Bassey Story (based on true events)
Logline: In 1951, nineteen-year-old African champion Okon Bassey crosses the waters to Liverpool, chasing the world title — but Britain and Nigeria have competing claims on him, and the fight to remain himself becomes the most dangerous bout of his life.
Gamel Apalayine
Ghana, writer, director
Project: The Gospel According to Charlotte Nelson
Logline: After her estranged son is murdered, pastor’s wife Charlotte Nelson, defies her faith and family to live with her son’s wild-hearted queer friends in the city, where her search for justice ignites a luminous journey of self-discovery.
AUTHENTICA PROJECTS 2025
Talemwa Pius
Uganda, writer, director
Project: Mad Bounty and the Midnight Gun
Logline: In 1885, Western Uganda, outlaw Mad Bounty hunts the British general who killed his mother only to uncover the Midnight Gun, a native weapon of raw power. To claim it, he must outwit the British and rival factions.
Mlilo Mpondo
South Africa, writer
Project: Women from the 13th floor
Logline: In seedy Joburg stands Hotel Baghdad, home to prostitutes, Khanya, Pinky, Netta and Damaris who secretly raise an immigrant orphaned child. They fight to keep him when social services discover their secret.
Logline: When a remote Kenyan village becomes a testbed for a universal basic income experiment, Lel, the shrewd but illiterate village administrator, must hold the community together as newfound wealth threatens to tear it apart.
AUTHENTICA PROJECTS 2024
Kelly-Eve Koopman
South Africa, writer,
Project: Facing the Mountains
Logline: Spirited Anika, her brother Zayn and bestie Fundiswa live in a bustling commune; when property tycoon Green threatens to destroy their home in the name of progress, the kids must learn to channel city magic to save it. Can they?
Moreetsi Gaban
Bostwana, writer
Project: Outreach (inspired by true events)
Logline: Jacob Lesiba, a seasoned detective haunted by family loss, partners with journalist and former abductee, Katlego Moloi, to investigate a ritual murder linked to a church with otherworldly origins in Maun, Botswana.
Tiah Beye
Ivory Coast / Senegal, writer
Project: Brouteure (The Yahoo Girl)
Logline: Stuck in Abidjan to cure her waywardness, spunky teenager turned unwilling repat Olivia teams up with online scammer Loïc – Cyber Romeo to many, hers IRL – to fund her ticket home to Paris.
Logline: Trust fund baby Martin Waithaka begrudgingly enters politics to win back his shrewd wife Rose, but uncovers a nefarious plot by a corporation that’s bribed Kenyan MPs to ban organic fertilizer, with Rose in on the action, can Martin balance love, loyalty, and political skullduggery before shit hits the fan?
AUTHENTICA PROJECTS 2023
Angela Wanjiku Wamai
Kenya, film editor
Project: ENKOP, The Soil
Logline: After her husband’s suicide, Lorna Marwa fights to reclaim her life on the dusty expanses of Kenya’s volatile ranch land.
Enkop is currently being produced as a feature film by Nairobi based LBX Africa and Netherlands based PRPL. Principal photography is scheduled to start in the last week of August 2026.
Logline: 1992. As South Africa transitions from oppressive regime to land of freedom, past and future collide when new detective Charlotte Ngoyi goes up against celebrated occult crime expert Johannes Auret on her first murder investigation.
Logline: Six travellers-come-conspirators become entangled in the vision of a radicalised and enraged local mastermind, and his ambitious mission to overthrow the government of Ghana.
Logline: Grieving Californian teenager, Aduni, feels trapped at remote Nigerian boarding school, Heron Hall. Her distress manifests as a nefarious spirit, Ojuju Calabar.
