Final 8 Shortlist

Death and Life argue over a dying man's remaining pages. The most distinctively voiced script in the entire batch. A single minimalist room. Five actors. Zero extras. The book-of-pages conceit (lifespan as numbered pages, burned by grief) is genuinely original. "LIFE happened" as a pun is human wit at its best. "Sometimes I answer as silence. Sometimes as a pause so long you mistake it for mercy."

A family comedy about one-upmanship that ends with a radio announcement of the Tlokweng bombing. One village compound in Radisele. The Motho le Motho Kgomo cattle-levy initiative is UB's own founding story. Brenda Fassie soundtrack. Djibril Diop Mambéty visual reference. The shift from comedy to historical weight is a sophisticated tonal move. AI VFX: 16mm film stock emulation transforms micro-budget into period cinema.

Two childhood friends reunite — then one finds a bone under the sheets. Literal skeletons as metaphor for secrets. Bar + apartment bedroom. Two actors, zero extras, zero VFX. Maximum ROI for micro-budget. Core concept is clever and human-originated. Caveat: Treatment prose is AI-assisted — closing paragraph, zero Setswana, over-explained symbolism. Requires script rewrite in the writer's authentic voice before production. "I told you nobody leaves… me" — that ellipsis placement is a genuinely unsettling human choice.

"For the first time, the mother must consider the mathematics of love." Near-future Botswana where water is rationed and families must deregister members to survive. A mother removes her own wrist from the scanner so her children can drink. The strongest single line across all 20 treatments. Restrained, compressed prose that already reads like cinema. Only sci-fi/dystopia entry in the slate. AI VFX editor creates the full dystopia aesthetic: drought grade, heat haze, scanner graphics, crowd extension.

A broke hustler finds a briefcase. The owner comes looking. Old Naledi township, Gaborone. Jazz soundtrack. "General Fish," SOS Children's Village, P3000 in Pula — hyperlocal detail that AI cannot produce. "One-room 2 and half house" is definitive Botswana township vocabulary. Missing section 8 is a human organizational error. Strongest commercial and local audience appeal in the entire slate.

A young man must find a lost cow before the lobola ceremony at dawn. Molepolole homestead with real cattle. Bakwena bride-price protocols authentically rendered. Mmakutlwano naming convention (Mma- prefix = "mother of") confirms genuine cultural knowledge. Typo "recue" is a clear human marker. 8 trained cattle on-set is the logistic challenge. Night search sequences across rural locations. Traditional Setswana music and ululations at the sunrise resolution.

A bullied 12-year-old runs into the Chobe forest hoping to die, and meets a 100-year-old talking baobab tree. Kasane / Chobe — 900km from Gaborone. Three speaking roles + Mowana tree voice. "Cringes at returning to the sad cynical world of people" — idiosyncratic and human. This is the one film where your AI VFX editor is essential — enchanted forest environment, talking tree face animation, bioluminescent overlays, dream transitions. Needs script development: cyberbullying + nature fantasy not yet integrated. Recommendation to writer: decide if this is a fantasy film or a grounded drama. It cannot be both at micro-budget.

A young warrior's Bogwera initiation in the jungle — a story unavailable in any other African film context. Jungle campsite with constructed huts. 5 speaking roles + 30–50 male extras in full Dikgabe warrior costume — beads, leather, feathers, spears. Large ceremonial bonfire + night jungle filming. Choreographed Setswana chanting and ritual sequences. "becasue," "immediatley," "suppoused" — overwhelming human typo evidence. Highest complexity + highest cultural significance in the entire batch. This is a heritage document as much as a film — the Bogwera is a living tradition that has never been captured with this level of insider detail.