The ACT NOW FILMFESTIVAL launches on SUNDAY with a writer’s workshop, creating space for dialogue, creativity, and the development of new narratives at the crossroads of sport and activism. This interactive session, led by Uzodinma Iweala, welcomes writers, filmmakers, students, and anyone eager to explore how storytelling can drive social impact. Together, participants will examine how sports can serve as a platform for resistance, inclusion, and change — and how creative expression can reimagine the stories we tell about justice, equity, and community. To join the workshop, simply sign up via the button below — spaces are limited, and early registration is encouraged.
A participation fee of €5 helps us manage limited workshop spaces and ensure that everyone who signs up can fully take part. Your contribution supports the event and confirms your spot.
UZODINMA IWEALA
About Uzodinma Iweala: Uzodinma Iweala is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and medical doctor, and the former CEO of The Africa Center in New York, where he championed new narratives about Africa and its Diaspora. He is currently a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he explores ideas of “replacement,” and teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at New York University’s Creative Writing Program.
Uzodinma was previously the CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and co-founder of Ventures Africa magazine, which focuses on the changing landscape of business, culture, and innovation across Africa. His acclaimed debut novel, Beasts of No Nation (2005), was adapted into a major motion picture; his nonfiction work Our Kind of People (2012) examines the HIV/AIDS crisis in Nigeria; and his most recent novel, Speak No Evil (2018), explores identity, family, and belonging. He is currently working on a forthcoming essay collection titled United States of Ambivalence.
His short stories and essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, and other leading publications. His films have been featured at Sundance and broadcast on Al Jazeera. Uzodinma also served as the founding CEO of the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria, which supports innovation and private investment in healthcare. He sits on the boards of the International Center for Photography, the World Wildlife Fund, and the International Rescue Committee. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, he now lives in Heidelberg, Germany.
THE WORKSHOP
How Stories Drive Courage and Change
This three-hour seminar explores how filmmakers, storytellers, and activists can build narratives that not only illuminate urgent issues but also move audiences toward empathy, solidarity, and action. Combining craft, psychology, and strategy, the session provides a practical framework for shaping creative work around a clear purpose while still allowing space for artistic freedom and emotional truth.
Participants will examine six core components of powerful change-driving storytelling:
1. The Question — Defining the Story’s Purpose
Every transformative story begins with a question. What are you trying to understand, reveal, or provoke in your audience? We will explore how strong narrative questions function as engines for curiosity, how they clarify the creator’s intention, and how they guide choices in structure, character, tone, and scope. Participants will practice articulating their own central question and testing whether their intended audience will recognize its urgency.
2. The Thesis — Building the Story’s Argument
Stories that move people offer more than information; they present a coherent narrative thesis — a statement about the world the creator wants the audience to consider, challenge, or embrace. We will work through how to identify your underlying claim, how to embed it in scenes, character arcs, and formal choices, and how to ensure your thesis supports emotional engagement without collapsing into didacticism.
3. Emotions (and Facts) — Mobilizing Feeling Without Losing Truth
Change rarely happens through facts alone, yet emotion divorced from truth can mislead or alienate. This section explores how effective creators balance emotional resonance with factual integrity. We’ll discuss perspective, whose viewpoint shapes “the facts”, and how subjectivity and lived experience alter audience interpretation. Participants will learn strategies for designing emotionally compelling sequences while grounding their work in accuracy, honesty, and ethical responsibility.
4. Vehicles for Expression — Character and Setting
The question and thesis find their expression through narrative vehicles: the characters who embody tension and agency, and the environments that shape their choices. This module breaks down how to build characters who carry moral complexity, vulnerability, or courage and how to select or shape settings that amplify stakes and illuminate structural forces. Through examples and short exercises, participants will experiment with constructing story worlds that naturally support their thesis.
5. Plotting & Framing — Structures That Move Audiences
Plot is not simply events; it is the deliberate arrangement of experience that helps audiences process meaning. Here we examine archetypal story frames (the journey, the fall, the reckoning, the awakening, the restoration, etc.) and how these structures can be used to support your thesis. We also explore different forms of causality, tension, pacing, and point-of-view that help translate question + thesis into narrative momentum. Participants will experiment with mapping their story onto a selected frame to test its emotional and persuasive power.
6. Style — Form as Emotional Strategy
Finally, we look at style as an instrument of change. Visual grammar, tone, pacing, sound, voice, and rhythm are not aesthetic choices alone; they are methods for shaping the audience’s emotional state and moral imagination. This segment encourages participants to see style as an extension of intention: how the “how” of storytelling can heighten courage, deepen empathy, and sharpen critique.