The first time I was at a film festival outside Nigeria was back in 2014. The venue was Durban, South Africa. A filmmaker asked me if...
About a fortnight ago, I was in conversation with the director of the International Documentary Festival, Amsterdam. One of the many things he told me...
In La Femme Anjola, the director, Mildred Okwo, inserts Nigerian elements into the noir genre – or maybe it’s the other way round: she inserts noir elements...
Around 2 AM yesterday, festival director, Tabitha Jackson, and other members of the Sundance Film Festival, the biggest independent film festival in the United States, kicked...
For some time, it’s been difficult to get up to 10 films worthy of inclusion into any serious list about good movies from Nigerian cinema. So...
There is a subtle shift in modern Nollywood romantic comedy from family to work. Well, maybe it’s not a shift but an expansion. For many years,...
Often, I think about a line from a piece by the Nigerian author, Tola Rotimi: “Families are everybody’s first war.” Recently, I had cause to remember that...
This year, the new Rattlesnake falls into the same type of trap as last year’s Living in Bondage did: the filmmakers think of cinematic storytelling, in...
Can women be friends? Old Nollywood would say no. It had an interesting definition for women: witches, husband snatchers, and devious creatures operating in opposition to one...
The last time I wrote about Kunle Afolayan’s movies, I lamented his decline from the heady days of The Figurine to the rather piss-poor Tribunal. I...
I cringed along with everyone else who saw Ozo again and again pledge love and devotion to Nengi during the 2020 Big Brother Naija reality TV...
A reality TV show aiming to name a king at the end is supposed to be suspenseful. But there was no suspense at the BBN 2020 Finale,...
While it is fine to give the local audience exactly what it wants, it is no crime to desire a bit of ambition from one of...
So, for now, I’ll say Kenneth Gyang and gang are on the way to mastery. ** For Gyang, this might not be a career-making film—he made Confusion...
The last time director Ishaya Bako was in the cinemas, he arrived on the wings of an EbonyLife production. It wasn’t very original. It wasn’t very...
Sitting in the dark with mostly white faces listening to Fela can be a bit uncomfortable—especially when the song playing alludes to slavery. “Why black man...
The last time Banky W was in a movie (Wedding Party 1 and 2), he had too little to do. In Anakle Film’s first production, Up...
Spoiler alert: This review contains several spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie Lionheart and want to not know what happened until you see it for...
There are a vast number of stars in the new Ebony Life film, Chief Daddy, but there is too little that matters. The plot is thin,...
Three cheers for growth! Ayo Makun made commercial history with a mediocre movie, and then he did it again with a bad movie. He’s back with another...
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