Watch Zimbabwe’s First Movie To Be Distributed Online: This May Be The Right Way To Go For Zim Film Industry

It’s not your everyday thing to see a Zimbabwean movie being sold on a platform like Vimeo, when we are used to just go into town and buy a pirated movie (on a disc) or just download it for free on the internet.

But a local movie could change the status quo on how the local film industry can earn money. The Letter, is a local movie that is being featured on streaming site Vimeo. The movie got to be on Vimeo’s on-demand platform courtesy of CMG International Media Group publishing company which has the The Letter’s exclusive online distribution rights.

To watch it on Vimeo, you have to pay at least USD $4 with your MasterCard or Visa card. The film is local (Zimbabwean) in many aspects as it features local actors, it was produced by local production houses and the story is based on a true event that happened in Zimbabwe a couple of years ago.

That’s a smart move

The unethical practices of pirating movies and downloading movies for free have caused our film industry to remain in the doldrums since the 90s as they  are failing to get paid for their work. So it perfectly makes sense to distribute the movie on a platform like Vimeo since it is within 4.2 billion people’s reach instead of just 16 million people in Zimbabwe when its physically distribution- which is the current means of distribution in Zimbabwe.

Remember, Zimbabwe has a lot of diaspora who, according to my knowledge, crave for local content hence this kind of content distribution really makes sense. Who knows where this might lead? Recently a movie from Nigeria made headlines when it was featured on Netflix. Maybe our local movies too will one day be watched not only on Vimeo but also on Netflix.