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© 2023 Soleil Spotlight
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Here's the first-ever behind-the-scenes look at the world's most trailblazing filmmakers & industry executives of color, their personal career journeys, and hilarious cultural moments. Immerse yourself into the world of film & entertainment while expanding your knowledge of different global cultures. The world is a giant marketplace and yet remains an extremely fractured place. We want to fill that in by speaking out loud on the lack of representative stories from people of color in western media. Soleil Spotlight amplifies these voices from the different diasporas of Asia, Africa Latin America, the Caribbean and the middle east. Follow us on IG - @soleil.space
21 Episodes
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Riding the high of the success of British cult classic Kidulthood, the highly popular Netflix show Sense 8, to landing the role of D in Yardie after bumping into Idris Elba in an airport, to playing the fallible character of Simon in HBO's I May Destroy You. The actor and director Aml Ameen is in the house people!!! He needs no introduction but we'll give him one anyway, not only does he speaks to everything we champion at Soleil in his passion and ethos, but also lite...
Bantú Mama is making waves on the festival circuit having just closed this year's Third Horizon Film Festival. All the way from the Dominican Republic we have filmmaker Ivan Herrera. Ivan spoke to us about the moment he realized he wanted to be a filmmaker, his transition from commercial to independent projects, and unpacked why Bantú Mama is an ode to transculturalism. Follow Ivan on IG @ivanherrera and Bantú Mama @bantumama.film Don't forget to rate and subscribe! Follow us on IG - @sol...
Founder of the Caribbean Film Academy and Director of Third Horizon Film Festival ( one of the best festivals in the world) we have Romola Lucas with us. From marine biologist and geologist to now lawyer, and film producer. Romola's story of perseverance proves to us that you really can do it all! Starting with her childhood in Guyana with its white sand and brown water and moving through. And she also introduced us to our new favorite drink - swank! Third Horizo...
Emmy-nominated director, cinematographer and founder of Capital K Pictures, Sofian Khan joins us with a truly beautiful and inspiring conversation. Sofian spoke to us about his desire to create multilayered diaspora stories of art imitating life, the incredible story of Afghan and Iraqi translators captured in his lauded documentary The Interpreters, and perhaps the most eclectic mix of Soleil Speaks we've had to date featuring both Lancashire and Pakistani slang! Follow Sofian o...
From creating concert visuals for Beyonce and Jay-Z, to being mentored by the legendary Director X, to having Will & Jada Smith as Executive producers, we have Jamaican filmmaker and visual artist, Storm Saulter. Storm takes us on his creative journey way back from picking up his first disposable camera as a kid in Negril, Jamaica, to making his award-winning feature films Better Mus’ Come and Sprinter. Storm is a true creative force who also seeks to embed the complex social and cultural...
Academy Award, BAFTA and Independent Spirit Award-winning producer, writer, director and truly gifted storyteller. The first-ever South Asian to win an Oscar in the category of documentary feature! What an incredible year it has been for Joseph Patel, as you'll learn from this episode. From changing his name Moneesh to a more 'white sounding' one at a young age, to hanging out in Questlove's apartment in Philly at 4am, to his most recent project on serving as a producer on the Sundance ...
The name behind critically acclaimed film titles like Paan Singh Tomar and Neerja ( both produced by two major production companies Foxstar Studios & UTV Motion Pictures) This week from the land of Bollywood, we have with us Rucha Pathak, a multi-faceted Indian film and TV producer commemorating an eventful Women's History Month. In this episode, we're in Mumbai, India ( which produces the largest number of movies in the whole world) for a conversation with Rucha who walked u...
With 6 Oscar wins and 32 Oscar-nominated films, The true definition of a powerhouse boss lady is Brenda Gilbert. Behind various notable film titles like The Joker, Judas & The Black Messiah,& Queen & Slim. We have her with us straight from Vancouver conversing with us about her early aspirations to become an actress, but (didn't quite like being in the limelight) to pivoting to start an entertainment company; BRON Studios. Her Fiji roots but being a chamele...
Peabody, IDA, & PGA-nominated producer Toni Kamau is setting the records as the youngest female documentary producer to be invited to the Academy. Toni taught us about Sheng ( a slang language originating from the mix of Swahili and English),. In her latest film Softie, Toni humanizes and captures Boniface Mwangi the infamous political activist from Kenya in a point of view no one has ever seen before, her process of unlearning and unpacking the effects of the western gaze in storyt...
We are back! And what better way to give you a taste of what is to come in Season 2, than to give you an insight into the mind behind Soleil - your Soleil Spotlight co-host, Micha Cooper-Edwards. In this episode, we turn the spotlight on ourselves as Micha takes us through her journey from Trinidad to the US, her wide-spanning career at Nike, her career switch into the media industry exploring Nigerian film in London, and finally the reason she brought Soleil into the world. Follow Micha @m...
Creator of award-winning films like Vaya and Tell Me Sweet Something. His most recent venture was brought on to direct Greek Freak, a live-action film for Disney+ inspired by the true-life story of NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo…Akin Omotoso, one of the most sought-after film directors, writers, and actors in African Cinema is with us. Akin walked us through his experience emigrating to South Africa at a turning point in the country's history, and the importance of depicting a variety ...
Venice Film Festival-winning Columbian writer-director, Mariana Saffon. Mariana spoke to us about her non-conventional ways of scripting the highs and lows of being a woman in the film industry, which makes us the inspiration behind creating her Venice award-winning short, Entre Tú y Milagros, and meeting her idol Pedro Almodóvar whilst holding a handful of sandwiches. Follow the IG page @entretuymilagros to learn more about Mariana's Venice FF award-winning short. Don't forget to ra...
We’re in Turkey this week, with former Turkish surgeon and now film director, producer and screenwriter Ahmet Boyacioglu is best known for his first feature, Black and White, Ahmet now serves as the Art Director for the Festival On Wheels and the director for the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, one of the few festivals to hold a physical edition this year. Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival just wrapped its 57th edition, learn more about the festival here. An...
After a short hiatus, we're back!! From being a member of the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK, to now you may know him as Lee Truitt from BET's Being Mary Jane or PC Clark in BBC One's New Tricks. British-Nigerian actor, producer and activist Chiké Okonkwo is with us. Chiké spoke to us about growing up in a Nigerian household in South London, how his move to the US allowed him to tell the stories he truly wanted to tell and why he and Priya share a love of Beyoncé. D...
CEO and Artistic Director of the festival, dubbed by members of its community as 'the Black Sundance'. LA-born & Philly-resident, Maori Karmael Holmes is a curator, filmmaker, writer and founder of BlackStar Film Festival: an annual celebration of the visual and storytelling traditions of the African diaspora and of global communities of color, Maori spoke to us about how her creative journey through various touchpoints of visual artistry led her to where she is today, now serving a...
Award-winning Korean American independent producer, director & writer Grace Lee is best known for directing documentaries such as The Grace Lee Project and the Peabody award-winning American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, Grace told us about the moment when she realised her name was the ‘Jane Smith’ of East Asia, her desire to correct the narratives about minorities that are out there, and why meeting Grace Lee Boggs changed her life. Check out Grace's websi...
From most recently consulting on Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, Producer and poet Jenni Trang Le! Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Jenni has always been a storyteller, and after discovering film during university, went on to work on a number of US-based independent projects. In 2009 she made the move to Saigon official. 11 years later and a number of productions later, Jenni is a seasoned veteran of the Vietnamese film industry who spoke to us about why the decision to move was so eas...
Moses Babatope is Group Executive Director of Film One Entertainment Group (Film One Productions, Film One Distribution and Filmhouse Cinemas), collectively the biggest film studio, aggregation and cinema exhibition conglomerate in Nigeria. As you'll learn, this is just one of the several hats that Moses wears! After moving to London to study, Moses entered the film world moving up the ranks working at Odeon Cinemas, soon becoming a pioneer for Nollywood cinema in the UK; an experience ...
This week on Soleil Spotlight, Award-winning writer and director Bhaskar Hazarika shows us his insights this week on Soleil Spotlight. We're taking you to Assam, India. Bhaskar told us why he moved from working in Bollywood to independent regional films, the rise of Assamese cinema and why he chose to tell the highly unique story of two people who form a connection through their consumption of meat in his latest film Aamis, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. AAMIS is ava...
Asha Lovelace, Trinidadian filmmaker, founder and festival director of Africa Film TT Festival - an annual film festival that showcases the best of contemporary and classic films from the African continent. Asha's journey takes us from growing up in a house full of Caribbean creative legends to studying filmmaking with peers from across the globe in Cuba. She made her debut with the short George and the Bicycle Pump (2000). Her upcoming film project is The Dragon adapted from the Caribb...
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