Pan-African Animated Show ‘Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire’ wins Best Limited Series at 2024 Annie Awards
Cape Town-based Triggerfish Animation Studios, who co-produced the series, also celebrated a win in the Best Music category.
“Enkai,” the tenth and final episode of Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, has won the award for Best Limited Series Episode in the TV/Media category of the 2024 Annie Awards. It won over episodes from Only You: An Animated Shorts Collection and Pokémon: Path to the Peak, picking up the only accolade for the pan-African anthology series commissioned and premiered by Disney+.
Directed by Ng’endo Mukii, “Enkai” picks up visual language from stop motion, CGI and 2D-animation, making its magical realism themes even more engrossing and fantastical. Its experimental approach was laborious and ultra-technical, and its results ended up being inventive. “That was really a difficult practice in terms of lip-syncing, trying to put the shapes at the right frame, having this stepping motion, that I found so beautiful, but in CGI, people are not used to seeing that,” Mukii told OkayAfrica last year.
Kizazi Moto was also nominated in four other categories at Saturday’s ceremony in Los Angeles. Its third episode, “Moremi,” was nominated for Best Direction and Best FX, as well as a co-nomination for Best Character Animation, alongside the episodes “Surf Sangoma” and “Stardust.” The penultimate episode, “You Give Me Heart,” was up for Best Character Design.Kizazi Moto's win is an achievement worthy of celebration, for a project that centers African storytellers and illustrators. Co-produced by Triggerfish Animation Studios, it also underscores how the South Africa-based production company is playing a key role in elevating the visibility of animators across the continent. While the studio has partnered with multiple streamers, its relationship with Disney+ continues to be bar-setting.
At the Annies, Triggerfish also celebrated winning Best Music in TV/Media for “Aau’s Song,” an episode on the second season of Star Wars: Visions. “We owe an enormous amount to Disney for collaborating with us on 'Aau's Song’, Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes, and Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire,” Triggerfish CEO Stuart Forrest told OkayAfrica last year.
The common tie between all three Disney-partnered shows is cultural specificity. Even on Kizazi Moto, where filmmakers and animators were tapped from South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Egypt and Uganda, uniqueness is baked into every episode, reflective of the respective cultures of each represented country. These wins at the Annie Awards are a reminder of the inherent multiplicity of African creativity, and a validation that African animators can pull off world-class, inventive work.