MTN rewards Afrinolly Short Film Competition winners

As part of its loyalty to enriching the lives of its subscribers through discovering, empowering and developing talents across Africa, Nigeria’s leading ICT and Telecommunications Company, MTN, has rewarded the winners of the just concluded MTN Afrinolly Short Film Competition, on Saturday, February 22, 2014.

SHOWBIZPLUS gathered that the season two of the competition which started on September 1, 2013, with over 400 entries from African film makers from 16 countries, has produced ten up-and-coming filmmakers in Africa.

After three months of competitive procedure, which deployed top of the range technological platforms involving online master classes and voting processes, an international panel of judges headed by Femi Odugbemi, an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer, announced Florian Schott as the best in Short Film category while Victor Okoye emerged winner in the Documentary category.

To this end, MTN Nigeria last weekend, rewarded Florian Schott and Victor Okoye with $25, 000 each for their exceptional skill in film and documentary making. Daniel Etim Effiong and Ronke Ogunmakin were rewarded with $10,000 each, while Gbenga Salu and Ng'endo Mukii were also rewarded with $5,000 each for coming second and third respectively. The competition which was not a winner takes it all, saw other finalists in both categories carting away with $500 each.

The afrinolly short-film competition is a unique, innovative and youth-focused Competition, with singular concentration on the next generation of African film makers. The Competition is designed to expand the conversations on issues about the African continent by Africans, motivate and reward young and emerging filmmakers who exhibit exceptional narrative skills using short movies and documentary as a medium.

The Chief Marketing Officer, MTN Nigeria, Larry Annetts, explained that MTN will continue to empower Africans and give them the platform to discover their talents. “We at MTN are happy to discover another set of talents across the continent. As part of our corporate social responsibility, we will continue to discover, develop and empower people with aptitude through our various programmes geared towards enriching the lives of Africans and the world at large.” He enthused.

He also reiterated the company’s promise in discovering talents. “We’ll never relent in our effort in unearthing talents as we have various talent hunt programmes like the, MTN Lagos Street Soccer, MTN Project Fame West Africa, MTN Football Scholar  among others.