Emma Okello arrives at Lagos Fringe this November with a Best Director award from the Nyasa International Film Festival in Lilongwe, won in late August 2025. In May 2026 his short Reverie took Best Director at the Northern Uganda Film Awards in Gulu. Okello took Best Editor at the same ceremony, and the film’s lead, Akena Godfrey, took Best Actor.
At Lagos Fringe he screens Bond of Tera, his 2026 psychological drama of about ten minutes. The festival runs 3–8 November, and the film screens someday in between. Frame by Frame (Nairobi) and Out of the Frame Marrakech have also selected it. As on Reverie, Okello holds the principal creative roles.
Emma Okello’s standard so far
Reverie shows what he is bringing. The 17-minute thriller follows Charlie, a troubled artist caught in a time loop, reliving the night a masked intruder takes his life. Okello wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited it. The circuit has taken it up, with selections or invitations from Juiced Film Festival (Nairobi), Ateker International Film Festival (Turkana), Lagos Fringe, Pearl International Film Festival, Lift-Off Global Network and the New York Tri-State International Film Festival. By his own account, no other Ugandan filmmaker won recognition at Nyasa.
That control of the whole chain is the production model of Phanuel ActM, the independent Kampala company he founded with Akena Godfrey, Odoi Lastone, Kaka Andrew and Andrew Kwizera. Born in Kampala in 2001, Okello has been learning the craft largely through online tutorials since about 2019. His films return to memory, guilt and inner states.
What Lagos Fringe tests
The results so far are cultural and circuit-based. Reports name no distribution or licensing deal of scale. Lagos Fringe puts a new film from the same hand in front of a Nigerian audience. What follows from it will show whether that standard converts into financing or ownership terms on a larger project.
Sources: Nation Online (Malawi) on the Nyasa awards; Mega FM (Gulu) on the NUFA Awards 2026; Guardian Nigeria on the Lagos Fringe dates; Okello’s FilmFreeway profile.
