Feature

Ebuka Njoku, almost two years after it was released for general audiences, of his debut feature-length film, Yahoo+, made his second feature film, Uno: The F in Family. The title of his debut feature film and the subject matter it broached — the throbbing question about the validity of the ritual killing committed by Nigerian internet fraudsters locally called Yahoo boys, introduced Njoku as an artist with a distinct creative voice. Although there are unmistakable discords in his voice, rewatching Yahoo+ recently and Uno, his recent film, one notices an artist dredging and tuning his artistic voice towards a near–perfect pitch. Thus, even when audiences listed the technical flaws in  Yahoo+, the film received high praise due to the rarity of Njoku’s vision and story. In WhatKeptMeUp‘s 2022 annual critics’ poll, Njoku’s work occupied the fourth position as the best Nigerian film. It’s important to state that Njoku’s film achieves this feat in a list having filmmakers and films with weighty budgets and portfolios to flex. Kunle Afolayan’s Anikulapo, Adebayo Tijani and Tope Adebayo’s King of Thieves, Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman, Kayode Kasum’s Obara’M, and Jade Osiberu’s Brotherhood are on this list. Desmond Ovbiagele‘s The Milkmaid, Damilola Orimogunje‘s For Maria Ebun Pataki, Segilola Ogidan‘s Tainted Canvas, and Njoku’s film on this list, prove that despite the seeming indie disposition that bonds these films and filmmakers together, the films still found warm embrace from Nollywood audiences proving the need for more alternative stories and voices.  Weeks ago, Njoku organized a media screening for Uno. Primarily, media screenings are organized by filmmakers with the motive that by inviting film enthusiasts and film journalists who will, in turn, write about their films,  hopefully,  public attention will be swayed toward the film. Thus, the media screening at EbonyLife Cinema had in attendance the film’s cast and crew ensemble supported by their friends and film journalists.  Watching the film, with the presence of the cast members, you can occasionally give the cast and crew members a warm and knowing glance.  Uno: The F in Family dwells on the story of Junior (Keezyto), an artist with a fractured relationship with his family. A decade ago, his juggling of his academic career and creative interest infuriated Uzu, and his father, (Nkem Owoh) and introduced disunity into the family. From a deeply religious family — Uzu religiously pays homage to his traditional deities and his mother (Jennifer Eliogu) compulsory saving prayer over a meal — Junior has moved away from the familiar terrain of religiosity. Despite Junior’s disinterest in his family, for his relationship with Ruky (Tomi Ojo), his Yoruba girlfriend,  to move to the next stage,  he has to visit and possibly shorten the distance between him and his family. Now at home, Junior realizes Gozie, his junior brother is living life with no semblance of direction nor urgency, and Ada, his sister (Sophia Chisom) is hoarding a secret.  Admittedly,  the film has a religious, cultural, and emotional base to explore. Junior’s apathy towards religion and opposing religious worldviews is a contrasting trait in the film. From a cultural standpoint, Ruky and Junior’s blossoming relationship and Junior’s mother’s antagonism to it recall an online conversation about tribalism. At its emotional core is the test of the strength of Ruky and Junior’s relationship. However,  the film needs to articulate the subject matter it intends to flatter attention on. The lovers’ relationship is passively given attention, making it impossible for the audience to launder enthusiastic responses towards them. Although there is a subtle belief that the dissonance in Junior’s family is occasioned due to his estrangement,  there is meager justification for this. Thus, even when their family is crumbling, the passive treatment of the numerous subject matter in the film makes it impossible for the audience to respond.  Keezyto,  who plays the lead in Yahoo+, returns in Uno. Despite the emotional and psychological demands the film requires of him, Keezyto’s performance doesn’t meet up. There is a dispassionate energy the actors bring to their performance.  While Owoh and Eliogu — two veterans, performances occasionally inspire admiration, other actors’ performances are lacking. Watching the actors’ performances is akin to watching actors in a rehearsal room reading their dialogue without discernible emotional interpretation. In scenes where charged performances are expected,  actors bring casual performances.  Understandably,  Njoku is still beginning his filmmaking career, and mistakes are expected.  But, much is expected of Njoku, credited with writing and directing Yahoo+, which makes a very blunt statement of his artistry. While one can extend the grace given to his debut film Uno: The F in Family, strong opinions should be passed about how his recent film contrasts, in a negative light, his debut film. 

It’s hard to remember the last time I rewatched a Nigerian film I intended to review. Thanks to the shoddy quality of mainstream Nollywood productions,  I pride myself in my innate ability to decipher, at a glance, the messaging of a Nollywood film. Unperturbed about being paradoxical or philosophical, Nollywood films and TV series don’t often lend themselves to complicated subject matters. Even when it does have a paradoxical or philosophical whiff, the films are often badly performed, written, and directed. Willing to rewatch is akin to enthusiastically pushing oneself toward the gallow. Strangely, I watched Ayomide Napson’s written and directed A Tale of Two First Dates twice. Two things might have inspired the rewatch: There is a heavy possibility that the two actors’ performance inspired my urge to watch the film or perhaps it was the pressing need for clarification and reflection. Whichever it was, I won’t be forgetting Napson’s film for a long while.  Isabel Adeleke (Sharon Rotimi), a PhD student of Psychology, and James Popoola (Olasunkanmi Olowu), an inmate, are the center of attention. Isabel, amid a turbulent divorce and lawsuit with her toxic omnipresent husband, needs James to fill out a survey. James, not quite the archetypal inmate — with crude spoken English and scar-suffused face, is willing to consent to Isabel’s request. Their at-first distrustful and cold attitudes towards each other will dissipate soon in moments of emotional intimacy and vulnerability.  Written, directed, and produced — a classical indie move by Napson, the bottle film interrogates topics beyond the unconventional connection between Isabel and James. During the twenty-five minute film, we discover James’ story in cryptic details: A group of people had invited chaos into his family, his sister and parent’s favourite had been killed therein, and in his pursuit for justice, after meeting disappointment from police officers and judge, he decided to play judge. The result: The justice system that slowly convicted his sister’s killers swiftly convicted him. With this laidback revelation, A Tale of Two First Dates, though with no overt political tone, speaks to the chronic dysfunction in the Nigerian justice system. With each passing day, Nigerians are often reminded, through the infuriating attitudes of police officers, politicians, and judges, of how feeble the Nigerian justice system is. But when it comes to convicting the poor or setting examples of the poor –the ALUU 4 Killing, the justice system roars into swift action. Although the film doesn’t actively interrogate this pressing topic, James’ story is steeped in how feeble the Nigerian justice system is.  What viewers might find ear-pleasing is James’ cryptic and often poetic dialogue which originates from Napson’s script. The dialogue, for me, is one of the intentionally developed aspects of the film. Napson’s script deserves attention as it passively worked social commentary into itself. For reference, James requests cigarettes during James and Isabel’s first meeting (the intention behind this is quite blurry). Wanting to get it, Isabel, for some seconds, forgets her phone and bag in the room. Realizing her “mistake”, she quickly dashes into the room. This awkward situation recalls that trite axiom of not judging a book by its cover. With leisure, the film passes this salient point that though stealing and other violence-inclined acts are the playing field for criminals and inmates, not all have that violent history.  Napson’s script, on two occasions, pays homage to British novelist and social critic Charles Dickens. The film’s title directly contrasts Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Published in 1859, the novel depicts the perils of class inequalities in society. Napson’s second act of devotion to Dickens is noticed in the dialogue. James tells Isabel, “Love makes you an Oliver Twist for suffering.” For cinephiles with feeble or firm roots in literature, it’s easier to recognize where the Oliver Twist allusion is from. You guessed right. It’s from Dickens. While there is a feeble possibility that Napson isn’t aware of these influences while writing and directing the film, these influences exist. And it shows Napson’s possible exposure to literature and its alluring impacts on filmmaking.  What’s strong and attractive about Napson’s film and by extension the actors’  performance is the prevalent subtleness and carefreeness. In Nollywood, it’s a rarity for directors to trust audiences to pick up information and character nuances without being prosaic. And Napson’s film achieved that feat. It relies more on implying its message than uttering it. And what viewers will come to appreciate is that what is implied carries more weight and depth.  Bonding and developing a blooming relationship with two socially separated strangers, a prisoner, and a Ph.D. student is possibly one of the mysteries of the film. Nelson’s script approaches this relationship with care and understanding of the characters’ story. Isabel is in the midst of her divorce and James’ life is on a countdown. Though unaware of each other’s stories intimately, the two characters bonded on their need to share their story with someone who might understand it and not interpret it from a religious or judgemental lens. This makes their bonding to be seamless and understandable.  For a director or writer to reference themselves in their film isn’t a rarity in the history of filmmaking. Celine Song’s Past Lives is a creative effort of Song, who wrote and directed the film, to understand the complexities of various epochs in her life. Greta Grewig’s Lady Bird is an ode to Sacramento and her teenage years in the city. According to the veteran filmmaker, Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets is “an attempt to put myself and my old friends on the screen, to show how we lived, what life was like in Little Italy. Thus being outrightly or ambiguously autobiographical in one’s film isn’t a new endeavour for filmmakers. However, what Nepson does in A Tale of Two First Dates while being autobiographical becomes prophetic.  For the filmmakers who stuff their personal lives into their production, it offers a lens and avenue to project their story. For the audience who watch these productions,

It began as a trivial conversation. It was a follow-up discussion after a much-heated one had just ended. Their words occasionally filtered to where I was standing, discussing with friends. The most vocal among them kept saying words that bordered between overt masculinity and overt stupidity. My interest in adding my thoughts to the conversation keeps waning the more I hear his insidious comments about women’s role in society. I am grateful I can’t recall some of his comments. I thought I had forgotten about this conversation until I wanted to write this review. I remember being compelled to say this during this toxic conversation. It was this comment of mine that keeps coming to my mind the more I think and reflect about Green: The Amazons. “We, as a society, don’t encourage female participation in sport and we want them to compete fairly with their male counterparts.”  On different occasions towards the final part of the Oluchi Mary Nsofor-directed documentary, Green: The Amazons, my comment gets credence. Sports though a gender-neutral profession has been monopolised by males. It is seen as an oddity; a deviation from the convention, when a female who is passionate about sport embraces their sport-related interest. Name-calling: “tomboy” which borders on communal shaming and bullying becomes a soundtrack of these female sports enthusiasts. In Green: The Amazons, we see how these female athletes have learned to embrace their identity and live with it.                                                                                                              Green: The Amazon is an intimate documentation of the stories of five Nigerian female athletes: Diana Osmondi, a Golfer, Chioma Ajomiwe, a Boxer, Anna Chineye Emefo, a Footballer, Amaka Okoh, a Basketballer, and Balikis Yakubu, a Sprinter. The feminist undertone unifies these collections of different but interloping stories. What propels the unity amongst the individual stories in this documentary is the unwavering vision of the five athletes. Although the passionate pursuit of their dreams is often met with unprecedented challenges, these challenges haven’t crumbled the height of their dreams. Their dreams bear a national emblem of Nigerians’ passionate interest in “making it” even when Nigerian society tries to deem that possibility. Beyond being a story of five Nigerian female athletes, it’s the story of five Nigerians who have refused to be bullied by the Nigerian government’s apathetic gesture towards easing life for its citizens.                                                                                                        There are controversial issues that affect Nigerian female athletes. No conducive training space. The paucity of professionally-trained coaches. Absence of motivation and incentives. The list keeps growing daily. However, rather than the documentary becoming a motion picture reiterating this cliche and age-long grumble, the documentary focuses on humanizing its subjects. We get familiar with the prayer routine of Anna Chineye Emefo and that of her family. Pictures and video clips that hoard moments of victory for these female athletes are paired with Famous Odion-Iraoya’s shot. The documentary made us willing voyagers in the documented lives of these women. The pictures and newspapers that formed the interior decoration of Chioma Ajomiwe’s makeshift home reminded us of the pictures pinned to the wall of our room. This intimate approach that the documentary’s director adopts in telling this story makes us active observers of the lives of these athletes. It allows us access to their story, to see, indirectly, fragments of our drive, cherished memories, and passionate pursuit of dreams through the lives of these women. It is a communal but intimate approach to filmmaking that allows us to share in their optimism and occasional doubt of their families and friends.                                       The narrative is frustrating. Sports enthusiasts often pursue their passion in a country that stifles passion. Amongst the parallel agreement of the different commentators in the documentary: Yemisi Cole, Abayomi Ajewole, John Abimbola Faniran Akofa, and the exhaustive list of the friends and families of the spotlighted athletes, is that sports don’t often receive the generosity of the Nigerian government. The Nigerian government is painfully frugal with its financial obligation to the sports industry. Thus, Nigerian athletes, like the five female athletes, often have to rely on personal funds raised by struggling parents and friends to buy training equipment or get transportation to training centers. It is the same narrative for both male and female athletes but for the female athletes, the situation is more dire. However, despite the odds, these ladies are still boastful of their dreams.  Get Tickets to the screening of Seun Afolabi’s ATOKA, Feb.24 New Culture Studio, Mokola, Ibadan