Inside Gemini Africa's Radical CinemaTech Track

When Adly Thoma set out to bring the worlds of filmmaking and entrepreneurship together, eyebrows on both sides of the fence were raised. As chairman and CEO of Cairo-based investment firm, Gemini Africa, Thoma is an expert at spotting innovation, spotting the ‘next big thing’, if you will. This, he thought, would be his biggest challenge yet - but just over one year on from the launch of Gemini Africa’s radical CinemaTech Track, the company is poised to change the filmmaking industry from the inside-out - not just locally, or even regionally, but globally too.

Understanding that cinema is a field that has historically been impervious or even resistant to the touch of entrepreneurship, Thoma and co. launched the track to bring innovative technology into filmmaking as a craft and as an industry, and hold the intellectual property rights to the track and anything that comes out of it on a global level.

Having found its feet at the 2020 El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt with its first pitching session, Thoma and Gemini Africa have been welcomed with open arms by the global cinema community, including the Cannes Film Festival - suggesting that maybe Thoma’s initial reservations were all wrong. Maybe cinema was in need of a boost - it just didn’t know where to find it.

For Thoma and co., entrepreneurship is the answer - entrepreneurs hold the keys to bringing together technology and creativity, a cross section that cinema plays in and around. This is just the first step though, and the real impact hasn’t yet begun as we found out when we sat down with Thoma at this year’s El Gouna Film Festival.