Jamaican film-maker Mary Wells believes her recent win for Best Diaspora Feature at the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), is an opportunity to explore markets beyond North America and Europe. “This is very important,” she noted. “These markets are huge, especially Nigeria, but it’s how to carefully access them. And the publicity goes across the continent, which can only help such a tiny film… publicity we could never afford.”

That ‘tiny film’ is Kingston Paradise, an urban drama which has a strong Jamaican cast of Christopher Daley, Munair Zacca, Camille Small, Gregory Nelson, Paul Shoucair and Peter Abrikian.

According to Wells, other Caribbean films have received the same award, but never from the English-speaking Islands.

“The French islands are far more developed in film than us and far more aware of global film cultures and institutions, and automatically get funding and distribution in the French-speaking world and distribution in Francophone Africa,” she noted. “They have far more exchanges through culture, especially through film.”