His predilection for nuance is also admirable evinced by how he makes Tatiana and Ginika worldly but still vulnerable, and how he resists the temptation to frame their quest for financial independence as a desire borne out of profound desperation. Unfortunately, his over reliance on dialogue over wordless interactions for exposition suggests a distrust of the audience’s capability for discernment.
Movie Review
As we binged The Polygamist, we debated on the characters and some of the scenes that played out: Ah, if these women were Nigerian: Joyce would have been the one thrown out and locks changed; she would have left with all her children in tow.
As cinema, Agesinkole: King of Thieves 2 is an uneven but often engaging historical epic whose political allegory ultimately proves stronger than its storytelling discipline. As an intervention in how Nigerian films might find their audiences, however, it may prove genuinely transformative
Bitterness has an unusual appetite. It is never satisfied with hurting the person who caused the original pain. It demands collateral damage, it wants children, siblings, relatives and friends enlisted into its army and it seeks applause for revenge masquerading as justice.
Silence is woven in and out of the storyline. Most instrumentally, it is represented by one of the main characters, Wuese, who is a deaf-mute. While women and children are most vulnerable in times of crisis, the character Wuese represents another subset of this demographic: disability.
The wearing of so many creative hats (a legitimate feat for a debut) also produces the film’s most visible seam. There is a tension between Emmanuel, the director, who wants to make something formally ambitious, and Emmanuel the subject, who wants to be fully seen. That tension is never quite resolved, and the film’s bloated runtime reflects it: a story that would benefit from a ruthless external edit, that mistakes length for emotional weight and repetition for depth.
Call of My Life, written by Uzoamaka Power and directed by Dammy Twitch, is a film that knows this language and has decided, with considerable charm and only occasional uncertainty, to go against it. Power plays Soluchi, a call centre agent whose emotional texture runs at a frequency the city around her has not been calibrated to receive. She’s quirky and high spirited. She spins on the pavement on her way to work. She gives herself completely to whatever she sets her heart on, which in the film’s opening act is Kalu (Zubby Michael), a financially comfortable Igbo businessman whose love language is his debit card
Behind The Scenes is psychological realism and trauma-focused. Instead of planning the mise-en-scence, and regulating characters’ performances to make them convincingly impactful, the directors Funke Akindele and Tunde Olaoye rely on excessive emotions to arouse pity. Their failure in monitoring the incidents resulted in the calamity that befalls Aderonke’s lawyer, Victor (Uzor Arukwe).
Putting a city’s name in the title of a film is indirectly promising the audience that the city is central to the soul of the story. Aba has an incredibly distinct, commercial and bustling identity. The Aba setting of this film, however, is nominal; there is nothing visually tying this film to the city. It could have been set in any city but Aba.
Nollywoodʼs suffering mother, in its earliest and most honest incarnations, had something of the former. In most of its contemporary iterations and certainly in its most commercially successful one, it has become the latter. The mother suffers, the children unite, the audience weeps, the credits roll, the naira accumulates…
Short film production has been on the rise with producers taking advantage of the availability…
This section humanises Wizkid by refusing spectacle. Even at this height of his success, the documentary insists, greatness is still labour. Fame does not erase anxiety; it simply magnifies what is at risk. And when he learns that his ailing (now deceased) mother’s health has worsened, almost colliding with his struggles to get his set ready, we see the pain behind the fame.