Award-winning movie producer, Peter Sedufia, has lamented government’s failure to sponsor or pay any attention to their film’s involvement in this year’s Africa’s largest film festival, FESPACO, happening in Burkina Faso.

According to Peter, their movie “Keteke” was selected for the festival and as required, the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Arts was to sponsor the trip of some cast and crew as well as send a delegation to support the filmmakers.

However, upon several visits to the Ministry, they were told to “go and come”. He was however able to get the French Embassy to sponsor the producer’s trip, which is him.

In a very long Instagram post, Peter wrote:

“Currently at FESPACO, where it looks like the filmmaking hub of Africa has converged. Most countries whose citizens’ films are in the festival have sent entourage of delegates from their countries to come support their filmmakers in this all important celebration of African cinema. As to how they managed to get their government involved, is another discussion. Back home in my country, Ghana, we sent an official letter to the ministry in charge of our creative industry to inform them of the selection of “#KETEKE” in this prestigious event, and sought for sponsorship to send some of the cast and crew to represent the film just as other countries have done. Guess what? It has been “go and come, go and come”, till we sent a late letter to the French embassy in Ghana and they accepted to sponsor one of the crew “the producer” to the event. Of course, I am here on the ticket of FESPACO; they could only sponsor one person on the team.
Now, here we are, and all the media outlets, including BBC and the audience keep asking why the lead cast are not present. Then, BBC decided to have a phone interview with the lead actress (@lydiaforson) in the link below:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p071ywm1
And guess what again? 
I’m informed that the Rwandan president is arriving in Ougadougou today to join his people to support the Rwandan film in competition at FESPACO. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear from our sector ministry… “

Lydia Forson, who is a member of the cast of “Keteke” and lead of the movie, had to grant an interview to the BBC on phone because she couldn’t attend due to the Ministry’s failure to grant them sponsorship.

Lydia told the BBC’s Newsday that she is not at the festival because she relied on the government to fund her trip to the festival.

“As most festivals go, usually the director or the producer is invited and then you rely on sponsorship mostly from the state or from corporate entities to you know get a whole team to go and support you,” she said.

“Over the years we source for these funds ourselves but this year I was you know, with our current government, you know pushing the creative arts agenda. I was determined to make a statement that a lot of times there’s what politicians say and then there is what they do. So, we decide to go through the right process, were we sent letters and all of that”.