Can Local Languages Take Ghanaian Cinema Global? BSIFF Thinks So
African cinema is producing more films, discovering new filmmakers and reaching audiences far beyond the continent. Yet one question still demands attention: Are Africans watching African films?
Not occasionally. Not because someone sent them a link. But deliberately, seeking them out, paying for them, going to the cinema, discussing them, and waiting for the next one.
For the Black Star International Film Festival (BSIFF), that question has opened up another conversation: Could language be one of the bridges that brings African cinema closer to African audiences?
As BSIFF prepares for its 11th edition in Kumasi, the festival is putting local-language cinema at the center of a broader conversation about the future of African storytelling.
The idea is not that language alone can solve the challenges facing African cinema. It cannot. But BSIFF believes it is a question worth asking: Could telling stories in the languages people actually speak create a stronger connection between African films and African audiences?
Read also: What Will Make Africans Watch More African Films?
The Language Question
African filmmakers are making films. More filmmakers are emerging, technology is making production increasingly accessible, African films are travelling to international festivals, and streaming platforms have created opportunities that did not exist before.
But production is only one part of the equation. A film industry cannot grow sustainably without audiences. Films need people who will deliberately seek them out, pay to watch them, return for the next one, and create demand for more.
That is where language enters the conversation. Could hearing a familiar language make a viewer feel closer to a film? Could it encourage someone who does not currently see cinema as “for them” to pay closer attention?
And if that connection grows from thousands of viewers to hundreds of thousands or millions, could language become more than a cultural consideration? Could it also become an audience and business strategy?
BSIFF is not presenting local language as a magic solution. Major issues remain around quality, distribution, affordability, cinema infrastructure, marketing, technology, and investment. But language may be one part of the puzzle.
Look beyond Africa, and there are examples worth considering.
South Korean films and series have travelled extraordinarily far without first becoming English-language productions. They remain Korean in language, culture, names, food, and identity, while international audiences enter those stories through subtitles and dubbing.
China offers another interesting example.
The BSIFF material points to the 2026 Mandarin-language historical series Pursuit of Jade, which reportedly crossed four billion effective online plays and reached audiences across 191 countries and regions through subtitles and dubbing. It also entered Netflix’s weekly Global Top 10 for non-English television.
The bigger lesson is not that Ghana or Africa should become Korea or China. It is that a story does not necessarily have to abandon its original language to find a global audience.
The language of the story and the language of the market can be treated as two different questions. Instead of asking, “What language should I make this film in so everybody can understand it?” Perhaps filmmakers should first ask, “What language does this story belong in?”
Then comes the second question: “How do I make sure everybody else can enter it?”
For Ghana, there is already a local example.
Ghanaian broadcasting has demonstrated the power of meeting audiences where they are. Twi and other Ghanaian languages are regularly used across radio and television to discuss politics, relationships, religion, entertainment, news, and comedy.
People listen. They call in. They participate. They discuss.
The country has also spent years watching foreign productions, including Mexican and Indian soaps and series. Through dubbing, subtitling, and localization, broadcasters brought stories from thousands of kilometres away closer to Ghanaian audiences.
Foreign characters became familiar. Their stories became part of everyday conversations. That raises an obvious question: If language and localization could bring foreign stories closer to Ghana, what could the same approach do for stories that originate here?
Kumawood provides perhaps the clearest Ghanaian case study.
Films predominantly made in Twi built stars, created a distinctive screen culture, and attracted audiences who recognized themselves in what they were watching.
Kumawood proved that audiences would watch.
The next challenge is scaling that connection. How does a film move from Kumasi to Accra? From Ghana to Uganda? From Africa to the rest of the world? That is where the conversation moves beyond language.
Local Language Alone Is Not Enough
If local language were enough by itself, Ghana would already have solved every challenge facing its film industry.
It has not.
Kumawood’s success demonstrates the power of language, humor, familiarity, and audience connection, but turning that connection into a sustainable, internationally competitive industry requires more.
Writing matters, and so do directing, performance, cinematography, sound, production design, and post-production.
Technology, marketing, distribution, investment, and infrastructure also matter.
The experiences of Korea and China therefore offer a more useful lesson than simply “make films in your own language.” Their ambition did not stop at cultural authenticity.
The language remained local. The ambition for quality did not. That distinction is important for Ghanaian cinema.
People may come because they recognize themselves in a story. But they will stay because the storytelling is good. They will pay because the experience is worth paying for.
And someone thousands of kilometres away may willingly read subtitles for two hours because whatever is happening on the other side of those subtitles is worth their time.
This is where language begins to look like more than a creative choice. It becomes part of an audience strategy. Audiences buy tickets. They subscribe. They attract advertisers. They create demand.
Demand attracts investment, and investment makes more films possible. The challenge, then, is not to remove what made local-language cinema connect with audiences in the first place.
It is to add the quality, technology, investment, distribution, and ambition needed to take that connection further.
And this does not mean getting rid of English. An English-language Ghanaian film is Ghanaian cinema.
A Twi, Ga, Ewe, Dagbani, and Fante film is all Ghanaian cinema. There is room for all of them.
The real question is whether Ghanaian filmmakers have been given enough opportunity to develop stories in the languages that best serve them and whether the industry can then create pathways for those films to reach wider audiences.
A filmmaker should be able to ask, “What language allows me to tell this story most truthfully?”
The industry can then solve the access problem through subtitles, dubbing, translation, technology, and distribution. In simple terms: Tell the story in the language where it lives. Then build the doors through which everybody else can enter.
From Ghana to the Rest of Africa
Another possibility deserves greater attention.
When African cinema talks about international expansion, the conversation often moves immediately from Africa to Europe, America, or Asia.
But what about Africa itself? What about Ghana to Uganda? Uganda to Ghana? Senegal to Nigeria? Nigeria to Kenya?
Why shouldn’t someone in Kumasi discover a compelling film made in Luganda? Why shouldn’t someone in Kampala be waiting for the next great Twi film?
Subtitling and dubbing could become more than tools for taking African cinema to the rest of the world. They could become part of the infrastructure through which Africans discover one another’s stories.
Imagine a filmmaker telling a story in the language where it naturally belongs. When the film is subtitled, dubbed, translated, and distributed, it will then move across Ghana, Africa, and eventually across the world.
Here, the story remains local; the potential market becomes global. And that could fundamentally change the way African filmmakers think about language.
The objective would not be to make every story sound the same so that everyone can understand it. But it would be to preserve difference while making that difference accessible.
Why This Matters to BSIFF 2026
This is the thinking behind local language cinema becoming one of the pillars of BSIFF 2026.
The 11th Black Star International Film Festival will take place from September 24 to 27, 2026, at Golden Eagle Cinemas in Kumasi, under the theme “Film & Global Culture: The New Wave of African Cinema.”
For BSIFF, the conversation about the new wave of African cinema must begin with the audience. Not only the audience in London, New York, Paris, or Seoul.
But the audience in Kumasi, Accra, Lagos, Kampala, Dakar, and Nairobi.
The African audience.
Language will not solve everything. African cinema still has to confront challenges involving quality, distribution, affordability, cinema infrastructure, marketing, technology, and investment.
But language belongs in that conversation.
Ghanaian broadcasting has already demonstrated the power of meeting audiences where they are. Kumawood has demonstrated the strength of linguistic and cultural familiarity.
And the international reach of Korean and Chinese-language productions offers another reminder: global audiences are willing to cross linguistic boundaries when the story is compelling enough.
Perhaps the choice is therefore not between being local and being global; African cinema can be both.
Rooted at home. Confident in who we are. Committed to excellence. Open to the world.
The proposition is becoming clearer: build the audience at home, raise the quality of the work, create the infrastructure for it to travel, and tell stories without being afraid of sounding like ourselves.
Then make those stories good enough that someone somewhere else wants to enter. Bringing African cinema closer to the world begins with bringing it closer to its own people.
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