Ethiopia’s ‘Sunday Morning’ Wins at Annecy, Draws Disney

ETHIOPIA · FILM

Ethiopian animation has its first global breakout: Sunday Morning, a short from the Addis Ababa studio Beharger lij, won the AGrAF and Disney Television Animation awards at Annecy’s MIFA market — and Disney has taken a development option to turn it into a series. For a scene its own founder says is still in its infancy, it is a door swinging open.

A milestone for Ethiopian animation

The double recognition came at the International Animation Film Market, MIFA, held alongside the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France — the industry’s leading global marketplace since 1985. Sunday Morning took the AGrAF Award in the TV Series and Specials category and the Disney Television Animation Award.

No Ethiopian project had ever drawn that kind of attention at Annecy. The wins put a country with no formal animation industry onto buyers’ maps.

Semafor Africa described the moment as East African animators breaking onto the global stage, in an African industry whose established hubs sit in Lagos, Cape Town and Cairo. The prize list now has an Addis Ababa address on it.

The film Disney noticed

Written and directed by Minasie Terefe, with artwork by Milkias Yitref, Ephrem Terefe and Ermias Assefa, the short follows four siblings who turn a quiet Sunday morning into an adventure while trying not to wake their mother. It is drawn from the team’s own childhood Sundays.

Terefe trained as an architect before leaving the profession for animation, and his studio’s earlier short, Endegna, toured several international festivals. The new film has now secured a development option for a series adaptation with Disney Channel and Disney+.

“I can’t even call it an industry yet”

The wins say as much about what is missing as what is possible. “I can’t even call it an industry yet because it is still in its infancy,” Terefe said of Ethiopia’s animation scene, in remarks reported by Ecofin Agency.

Beharger lij earns most of its revenue from advertising campaigns and commissioned work for local companies and the Ethiopian diaspora. Ethiopia has yet to produce a fully domestic animated feature film or television series.

East Africa arrives at Annecy

The Ethiopian win rode a wider regional push. For the second consecutive year, ten East African studios travelled to MIFA in a delegation organised by the French Embassy in Kenya with the Kenya Film Commission, Alliance Française chapters and regional industry groups.

The call for applications drew 31 studios from five countries — 17 from Kenya, 7 from Ethiopia, 4 from Uganda, 2 from Rwanda and 1 from Tanzania. Five were selected to pitch projects directly to international buyers, among them Kenya’s Studio M&A, a national Best Animation award winner.

The delegation model is deliberate: give small studios a booth, meetings and a market vocabulary, and let the work compete. Two editions in, an Ethiopian short has converted that access into a Disney option.

Why it matters for Africa’s creative economy

Global streamers are competing for African stories, and animation travels across borders more easily than live action. A Disney option on an Addis Ababa short signals that the pipeline can now run from East African studios straight to global platforms.

A development option typically funds scripts, design and a pilot pathway while the platform decides whether to order a full series. Even if the series never lands, the signal to financiers is that East African intellectual property can clear a global bar.

The test, industry observers caution, is what follows the applause: funding, training and distribution remain thin across the region. But the direction matches a broader cultural surge from the continent — the same one that just made Burna Boy Africa’s most-streamed artist on Spotify — and it gives Eastern Africa‘s creators a commercial argument, not just a cultural one.

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