Cine Mayaka, formerly known as Cine Elmay, was built in 1977 in Kigali, Rwanda. After years of decline, this iconic venue was brought back to life in 2023 by Imitana Productions, the organisers of Kigali Cine Junction. Located at the entrance to Nyamirambo, Kigali’s vibrant and ever-evolving urban quarter, the cinema stands within a colourful melting pot of people and cultures.

In this conversation, Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo, one of Imitana Productions’s co-founders, reflects on Cine Mayaka’s distinctive history, its transformation, and the way it has grown into a wider ecosystem of cinephilia, film production and distribution.

Can you tell us about the history of Cine Mayaka? 

The cinema was built in 1977. Back then there used to be another cinema in Kigali, I think it was called La Sierra, which was more for the upper class. When Cine Mayaka started, it was an opportunity for everyone to be able to watch films. You still had to be able to afford going to the cinema, but it was much more of a popular place. It was built by a man called Emmanuel Mayaka, hence the name. 

Two years ago, we invited some filmmakers from the Rwandan diaspora to our festival. When they learned that Cine Mayaka is still there, they told us their parents used to watch films there. You really see these shared memories across generations. You can still see traces of time in the cinema. The 35mm projector is still there. It doesn’t work, but I believe it can be repaired. We still have some film prints from back then.

The genocide happened in Rwanda in 1994. Books and film were the only things nobody was stealing; otherwise, people stole everything and damaged every place. Cine Mayaka was somehow left untouched. 

How did you take over Cine Mayaka?

The city had two other cinemas. They both only showed big productions from France and the US. Rwandan films didn’t have a place to be shown. When we took over Cine Mayaka in 2023, it was because we were starting a film festival, and it was important for us to be able to show Rwandan films, festival films and arthouse films which people don’t get to see. We originally wanted to take it over only for the festival days, but it needed so much work. We realised that if we had to renovate it, we couldn’t take it over for four days and then come back the following year. The idea became to invest a bit more and take it over fully. The good thing is that it also has three offices, so we could stop paying rent for our offices and move in as a production company as well. At heart we are a production company. We are filmmakers who run the festival.

And now we also have a mission to bring a cinema back to life. Everything came out of passion. Even though we are only very few people, we believe we can make it.

What kind of renovations did you have to do when you took over Cine Mayaka? 

First, we had to bring in new toilets. They were really beyond repair. Imagine a place that had been closed for four years. We had to demolish walls, build new walls, redo parts of the ceiling, as well as fixing wooden floors that were not well aligned. We painted the whole cinema and put a red carpet in the mezzanine. We brought our own projector and sound system. And then we redid the entire electrical installation because we couldn’t trust the existing installations – they were old. Water pipes as well.

There is still so much work to do, but at least we did enough to get the permit from the city. We have a seven-year contract, and we’re slowly moving toward the middle.

What are your plans after this temporary lease? 

We have two ideas. The first idea is to negotiate and keep the cinema for more years. We don’t pay much rent because it was abandoned. So, having our offices there already means a lot. The second idea is to explore building a new cinema and keeping the spirit of Mayaka. As we’ve never really run it properly as a cinema with weekly screenings, our ambition is to build a small team of two or three people, with a projectionist, a cinema manager, and someone working on marketing and audience engagement, in order to run it properly and have daily or weekly programming. 

We got support from the Swiss Corporation, which funded a feasibility study to look at what is possible in terms of improving the cinema. We looked at the quality of the building and how to improve seats, ventilation, sound and projection. The building is very old, so it wouldn’t make much sense to introduce every modern system. There are holes in the walls, designed for natural ventilation. Sometimes they bring in sound from outside, which isn’t ideal, but it’s also part of the neighbourhood’s “organic” quality. If we close the walls completely, we would need a new ventilation system, maybe AC, and that would be heavy for the building.

You mentioned help from Switzerland. I also read that you brought in designers from Europe for the cinema. Can you please tell us more about that?

We brought in two experts. First, an architect called Jean-Marc Lalo. He has built cinemas in France, Kabul, Latin America and Burkina Faso. He also renovated the cinema in Tangier. It was really valuable to have him here, because we talked about what this cinema could become. Right now we only have one room. Instead of having 200 people in one room, the idea would be to have 100 seats on the ground floor with a café, to make it a social place, plus a second room, smaller, with 35 or 40 seats – so that, for example, we can have the film club without stopping other screenings, and host events that don’t generate income and really push film culture. 

The idea was also to have a rooftop and a view; Kigali is a hilly place. It would require buying the cinema. To build it like that would cost at least 500,000 euros, and then you need another 250,000 euros to buy it. It’s an expensive project. The Swiss, who are still in conversation with us, could contribute, but to do this, we would need multiple partners. That’s also why I mentioned the idea of starting a new cinema in the same neighbourhood: to keep the spirit, but find a larger plot of land where we can also solve issues like parking. We can’t expand where we are now, because the cinema is surrounded by hotels, and on the roadside there is only the road. 

We had someone from Germany advising on how to run a cinema today. His name is Christian Pfeil. He has a chain of cinemas in Bavaria. It was good to have him in Kigali. I also attended the CICAE cinema training, that’s where we met the architect. 

You also met Can Sungu of Sinema Transtopia?

We met in Ouagadougou, and he told me about Sinema Transtopia. When I was in Berlin, I visited it, and it was refreshing to see what you can do with limited means. We looked at how they built their cinema using stage-building techniques. They use wood most of the time. And they have this cool restaurant where people can hang out, and there’s space to sit outside. That became an alternative we can realistically dream of, and it’s not an unachievable dream. If you have the land, you can be in a good position to build something for maybe 200,000 euros, something really good.

Currently we are actually the only cinema in Kigali. All the other cinemas have closed. One of them was Canal Olympia; Canal Olympia is a chain across Africa run by Canal+, and the whole chain was sold. Another cinema has a technical issue – they need a projector lamp – and they have been closed for two years. Our idea will always be to remain an alternative cinema: to bring arthouse films, independent films, and also explore crossovers between genre cinema and auteur cinema. 

How do you manage your programme in terms of frequency? 

Frequency is an issue now because we don’t have a team dedicated only to the cinema. For example, in October last year we were shooting our biggest film, and we were away from the city for two months; only the film club was operating. That’s when we realised the cinema needs a team to sustain frequency – so even if we travel, the cinema continues to operate.

How do you organise your master classes?

Sometimes we have funds to prepare workshops, mostly through the Swiss Corporation. We run three or four workshops, and sometimes people approach us for collaboration. The most recent one was with the French Institute. They wanted to collaborate: we provide the space and bring our community to attend, and they bring a teacher. If you go to the French Institute, you get a specific kind of audience. If you come to Cine Mayak, which is in a popular neighbourhood, you can show the film to everyone. 

How big is your team? 

Only three people are working here full-time. Me, the managing and artistic director. Yannick, who is a producer and helps run things. Katie, who is responsible for marketing and sales. Depending on the project we hire more people. When we do the festival, for example, we have a team of 70 people. When we shoot a film, we have almost 200 people. 

We don’t have anyone dedicated only to the cinema, so it comes down to me and Yannick again. The sales person is not really from the arthouse film world. We also collaborate with some key members of the film club. We have a projectionist who is always there for the technical aspects: image and sound.

Who are your audiences? What is the demographic composition of your audience? 

They are mostly from Kigali. They are not only from the neighbourhood. We have a large community of cinephiles, and they don’t really have alternative places to watch films. Some are filmmakers and artists, and some are expatriates – cinephiles who land in Kigali. It’s a young audience. It’s the same kind of audience we have for our festival – Millennials, Gen Z, artists.

How do you situate Cinema Mayaka within the broader cultural landscape? 

We are in touch with a cinema in Nairobi called Unseen Nairobi and exchange with them. Their model is very interesting. They have their own restaurant, and the restaurant helps the cinema stay alive. We collaborate a lot with the Goethe-Institut. For example, we recently received a DCP projector from the same cinema chain in Bavaria I mentioned, and it was the Goethe-Institut that helped us ship it to Rwanda for free. The French Institute too, of course. The Swiss Corporation. And some artist collectives. 

Sometimes we host a fashion pop-up show. We hosted a party during our festival. We can remove the chairs, and the cinema can transform depending on the initiative. We have lots of music video shoots, and we’ve also shot a couple of short films here. And football games – because the neighbourhood loves football. Since the 1970s, when people didn’t have anywhere to watch the World Cup, you knew you could come to the cinema and watch it. 

How do you handle the financial aspect?

Right now we’re not really commercial. We have to find a way to be sustainable if we want to keep the cinema long-term. Mostly ticketing is free. Sometimes it’s by invitation. During the festival, people pay – that’s something we recently started. We realised that in this whole culture of accessing films for free, people became too comfortable. You can see it when filmmakers ask for a screening fee, people react as if films were printed for free. This is an art form that is expensive to produce, and if people produce things, they should get something back. We’re exploring how to change that, starting with small payments, so that people develop a culture of paying for films.

We only make money when we rent the cinema to institutions. Last week, we had the premiere of a film funded by the Swiss Corporation, and they rented the venue. But the following screening, open to the public, was free. We also give it for free to many artists. I would like to make it a little more commercial though, because it would allow us to improve quality, change a few things slowly, so the space becomes better. 

How do you see it as a place that creates an ecosystem that surrounds cinephilia, film production and distribution? 

What is interesting is the film club for film lovers starting in 2020. It is every Wednesday and open to the public. Sometimes we have themes, sometimes it’s carte blanche. Every member can be a curator. That really drives cinephilia forward. Sometimes they show a video, like an interview with the director, or do an introduction based on their research. After the film, every curator has to lead a conversation. In this way people learn to talk about films.

We always tell people who want to be filmmakers to attend the film club regularly. In a country without strong film schools, these are conversations you don’t get elsewhere. It’s tricky: when you don’t have a generation of filmmakers or film academics, who teaches? You find someone who studied journalism teaching at film school, but they are not always in touch with film practice. And when people who studied film history abroad come back, universities cannot afford them. Salaries are low, so you don’t always get the best lecturers. Sometimes a regular member of the film club knows more than film students who have studied for three years. So we collaborate with schools and say: bring your students to the film club. 

The film club is one pillar. Our annual festival is another. The festival is the high point of the year. It happens in July. Sometimes we can invite filmmakers, so the audience can meet filmmakers and have conversations. 

What is your programming strategy? 

For the festival, every year we have a theme. In recent years we’ve been drawn to what we call the black aesthetic. Our first impulse was: let’s look at African cinema. But we also opened the door to Afro-descended filmmakers. We are interested in how stories are told and wanted to champion filmmakers who really think about form. We felt many festivals, especially African film festivals, don’t push that question of form forward. We show a wide range of films. One of our opening films was Do the Right Thing, and we’ve invited Jean-Pierre Bekolo, a filmmaker from Cameroon. He is someone who writes and makes films with the question of film form in mind, like Djibril Diop Mambéty. Last year we had a focus on Senegal and brought three filmmakers from Senegal, including Moussa Sène Absa, who was assisting Djibril Diop Mambéty, whom we adore. Rwanda has a very young cinema, and the idea was to bring in a country that has been making films since the 1950s and 60s. 

We also have short film programmes, and we think about cinema as a mixture of theatre, literature, fashion, and music. Sometimes we invite a dancer and look at how dancing can be part of acting and part of storytelling. This year we’re going to focus on genre cinema, mostly Afro-descended films, but also with a window open to films from other places, to have different perspectives. We want to look at how genre gives opportunities to tell stories in new ways and to be creative within conventions. We want people to know these films, to talk about them, and to see how all these art forms come together to become cinema. 

Philbert Aimé Mbabazi Sharangabo is a Rwandan filmmaker and a graduate of the Cinema Department at HEAD-Genève. His debut feature film, Minimals in a Titanic World, premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2025. His acclaimed short film I Got My Things and Left received the Grand Prize at the 2019 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen – an Oscar-qualifying award. Over the past decade, Philbert has directed more than a dozen short films, which have been showcased at over 50 international festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Visions du Réel, Oberhausen, and Tampere Film Festival. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, the Locarno Filmmakers Academy, and TorinoFilmLab. The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen presented a retrospective of his films in 2020. Based in Kigali, Mbabazi Sharangabo is the founder of IMITANA, a production company that produces works of Rwanda’s dynamic film scene. Through IMITANA, he organizes filmmaking workshops, the Kigali Cine Junction film festival, and operates the Cine Mayaka, the only independent cinema in Kigali.