Alma Film Festival Sets the Course to Develop a Global Cinematic Agenda by Naming Its First Series of Global Ambassadors

Prioritizing underrepresented voices and markets, the festival's new Afro-Mosaic Cinema Circle begins with five filmmakers and cultural leaders from Cape Town to Suva.

Developed by the Alma Film Festival Executive Team

The map of world cinema has always been larger than the map of the film business. Films are being made right now in Maseru and Suva, in Toronto's Little Jamaica and on the Samaná peninsula, that most of the world has not yet had the chance to see, by young creators in markets that global companies are only beginning to understand.

On Tuesday, the Alma Film Festival moved to close that gap, naming the first regional ambassadors of its new Afro-Mosaic Cinema Circle: Lisa Mini in Cape Town, Lori Beazer in Toronto, Benny Marie Hiraldo Trinidad in Santo Domingo, Khotso Jaden Maphathe in Maseru, Lesotho, and Tumeli Tuqota in Suva, Fiji. They are the first of up to 30 ambassadors, each appointed for two years, who will advise the festival as it shapes a Global Cinematic Agenda: a plan for bringing underrepresented voices and markets into the center of the global film conversation. The Circle grows out of the Afro-Mosaic Cinema Summit, which the festival convened in Atlanta this fall.

The name is deliberate. "Afro-Mosaic" begins with Africa and its diaspora, but the mosaic is wider by design. The festival counts island, Indigenous and language communities across the Global South among the people it most wants to reach, which is why Suva belongs on the same map as Toronto and Maseru. Five cities are a starting point, not the full map, and as the Circle grows it will draw voices from across the film world, including its established capitals. But where it chose to begin signals its priority: regions whose stories, and whose audiences, have too rarely been part of the global picture.

Where We Chose To Begin

Cape Town is one of the busiest production centers in the Southern Hemisphere, and Lisa Mini, who will represent the Circle across South Africa, has spent much of her career helping to make it so. She served as Principal Film Officer for the City of Cape Town and, before that, worked at Wesgro, the regional tourism, trade and investment agency, helping to grow and promote the region's film industry. She set up and ran the Cape Town campus of the Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking, and today runs Mini Media House, a facilitation and consultancy firm that connects international productions and investors with South African partners.

Toronto is home to one of North America's largest Caribbean and African diasporas. Lori Beazer, who will represent the Circle there, founded the Toronto Pan Afrikan Film Festival in 2023 in the city's historic Little Jamaica, creating a home for filmmakers from across the diaspora. Her community-building reaches well beyond film: she also founded the Afro-Caribbean Farmers' Market, Canada's first culturally specific farmers' market, and created the Toronto Patty Festival, a Jamaican patty festival she bills as the world's first. "Black cinema is bold, beautiful, diverse, and deserves to be celebrated on a global stage!" she said.

Santo Domingo is Alma's home ground. The festival made its debut in Las Terrenas, on the Samaná peninsula, in March 2026, and the Dominican Republic, whose 2010 film law helped turn the country into a regular destination for international productions, remains the place where its ideas are put into practice. Benny Marie Hiraldo Trinidad, who will represent the Circle there, moves easily between that international world and the Dominican one. She worked as a production assistant on David Fincher's Netflix feature The Killer, and has acted in Dominican films including José María Cabral's Hotel Coppelia and the short Mientras la Tierra Gira, in which she plays the lead. She is also a singer who has performed at the Teatro Nacional, has her own segment, Modo Música, on CDN Radio's Modo Weekend, and was invited by the Ministry of Tourism to perform Dominican songs for an international audience at FITUR Madrid.

Maseru is the capital of Lesotho, a small mountain kingdom surrounded entirely by South Africa, with a film industry that is still taking shape. Khotso Jaden Maphathe, a Mosotho filmmaker and photographer, is one of the people shaping it. He founded Space Agency Africa, and his work blends documentary realism with thriller and speculative storytelling to reimagine Basotho culture for a new generation. He has made work for the World Bank, the World Food Programme and UNDP, collaborated in Atlanta with Atlanta Influences Everything, and is developing AI-driven tools that let creators generate and remix visual worlds. He is no stranger to Alma: the festival gave him its Vision & Voice Award in the Dominican Republic this year.

Suva, the capital of Fiji, carries the Circle into the Pacific. Tumeli Tuqota, an Indigenous Fijian and Tongan filmmaker with roots in the village of Gasauva in Cakaudrove, Fiji, and in Ha'apai, Tonga, founded and leads the Fiji Film Collective, sits on the board of Oceanic Refractions, and runs both an animation studio, Pixel Perfect, and a production company, Tali Films. His animated short Soli Bula, which imagines a Fiji that never lost touch with its traditions, has screened at Indigenous film festivals around the world, including the Maoriland Film Festival and the Native Spirit Film Festival, and is one of two short films he crowdfunded on a combined budget of just over NZ$23,000. Elections in Paradise, the 2024 documentary feature he co-directed with Laisiasa Dave Lavaki, follows Fiji's pivotal 2022 general election.

What the Circle will do

The ambassadors' role is advisory, and it begins with listening. Each was chosen for their standing at home: active in their community, well connected, and with a close, working knowledge of what local creators and audiences need. At the Circle's first convening in December, they will help set its agenda for 2027.

From there, they will serve as a standing source of regional insight for Alma and for its partner festivals, businesses, and institutions. That means consulting with partners on how to engage their regions, recommending films and filmmakers for programming, introducing local creators to potential collaborators, and contributing to the Afro-Mosaic Cinema Journal, the festival's collection of essays, editorials, and articles by contributors from across its global network.

The exchange is meant to run both ways. Partners gain a clearer, ground-level understanding of the communities they hope to reach. Local creators gain new paths to visibility and opportunity, from showcases and fellowships to co-productions, as the network and its partnerships grow. The goal is opportunity that is meaningful for every stakeholder involved. And what the Circle learns will be shared publicly, so the knowledge it gathers serves the wider field.

The Evidence And Opportunity Are Compelling

The demographics make the case. Africa's median age is about 19, and 28 percent of all people under 25 now live on the continent, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of United Nations data. Across much of the Global South, a young, connected generation is coming of age, eager to share its cultures and stories with the world, and the world's major companies are looking to these markets for their next era of growth.

Many of those companies have struggled to build lasting relationships there. In many communities, people have pushed back on older models of engagement that felt intrusive and extractive, and they are looking instead for relationships that are complementary, integrative, and more balanced. Alma believes the missing ingredient is cultural intelligence: a deep understanding of how communities see themselves, what they value, and how they want to be engaged.

Anthony R. Page, the Atlanta producer and director who founded Alma and serves as its Ecosystem Architect, describes the work as ecosystem building: a more dynamic global creative ecosystem, with more inputs from more of the world's cultures and communities, and a more evolved way of doing business within them. He sees the moment as a "Renaissance of Reclamation," in which communities from Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to the Caribbean, Latin America and the South Pacific are telling their own stories, from their own points of view, with new confidence and new tools.

That makes the Circle a bridge rather than a wall. For studios, streaming platforms, brands and institutions, a trusted network rooted in these communities is a valuable way in. For the communities, it is a path into the global conversation on terms that honor who they are. And for audiences everywhere, it promises stories that are more accurate, more authentic and more complete, a fuller picture of humanity told from the inside.

The Festival Behind The Circle

Alma describes itself as a cultural intelligence engine, and it is an unusual festival by design. It splits its year between two places: Las Terrenas in March, where the emphasis is on place and experience, and Atlanta in the fall, where the work turns to strategy, scholarship and new technology. Up to 80 percent of its program is given to cinema from the Global South, and it programs fewer films, with more intention, alongside fellowships, symposia and performance labs. Its coalition now counts more than 150 stakeholders in 56 cities across 42 countries. 

This fall's Afro-Mosaic Cinema Summit ran for five days in Atlanta, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, alongside the Ent-Tech Innovation & Discovery Expo, with every day built around conversations on the summit's themes. Sessions ranged from "Developing a Global Cinematic Agenda" to a symposium co-produced with Dr. Samuel Livingston of Morehouse College and Ent-Tech's look at how emerging technology can widen access to storytelling.

The summit also came to Georgia State University, with the support of Dr. Sarah Cook, dean of the university's Honors College, and Dr. Jonathan Gayles, chair of its Department of Africana Studies. Georgia State is one of the largest and most diverse universities in metro Atlanta, with more than 50,000 students, and it graduates more Black students than any other nonprofit college or university in the country. On campus, the summit screened Je Suis Noires, Rachel M'Bon and Juliana Fanjul's Swiss documentary about becoming a Black woman, followed by a dynamic discussion of the film and of identity. The Circle is designed to carry that conversation forward year-round.

What comes next

The founding ambassadors meet in December. The festival is onboarding more ambassadors now, and beyond the Circle, it plans to seek input from institutions, agencies, and individuals around the world whose thinking can help shape a more inclusive, more dynamic, and more humanity-affirming global film landscape. Progress will be reported in the Afro-Mosaic Cinema Journal and across the festival's digital platforms, and shared through its partner networks and each ambassador's own circles of influence.

When the Circle succeeds, the payoff will be measured in more than deals. Companies gain lasting relationships in some of the world's fastest-growing markets. Filmmakers gain a seat at a wider table. And viewers everywhere gain a fuller, truer picture of one another, which may be the most valuable thing cinema has ever offered.

That is the path Alma has charted from the start, through six Pillars of Purpose that build on one another. Page puts it this way:

"At its core, the Alma Film Festival is a conversation, and so is the Afro-Mosaic Cinema Summit. We hope these conversations lead to meaningful connection, and that connection builds a deeper sense of community across the globe. Over time, we believe, community leads to intentional collaboration, and collaboration to lasting cultural diplomacy and collective growth."

Conversation · Connection · Community

Collaboration · Cultural Diplomacy · Collective Growth

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