Nigerian film with a starring role for Lagos

Daniel Nelson

The Nigerian twin brothers who directed Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) and the two lead actors are the stars of this fascinating film – and so is Lagos.

The city, with all its frustrations, plays a key role, and though the procuring of passports and visas from dubious intermediaries is a driving force in the personal dramas played out on screen, the film clearly has a love-hate relationship with the former capital.

In the opening section Lagos and Lagosians seem determined to make life unbearable for electrical repairman Mofe, a modern Job who is driven to self-destructive anger by a sequence of events that send his life spiralling downwards. He wants to evacuate to Spain.

At the same time – and connected only by the loosest of links –hairdresser, bar-tender and sister-carer Rosa is trying to dig herself out of her own troubles. She wants to head for Italy.

There’s no point in going into the plot: what’s on show here is Life. There are so many delicious vignettes. My favourite is a conversation in which Rosa tells her bemused current squeeze why she passed on to her sister the phone he bought her and also asks for money to pay her rent. It is quiet and understated, yet speaks truths about the realities of power and money in Lagos: it’s a masterclass of scripting and acting.

Some pundits have hailed the film as part of Nigerian new wave, and of the growing maturity beyond Nollywood. Though a little too long and elliptical for many viewers, it has charm, humour, depth and originality.

“Nigeria should be proud. “Nigeria is where I’ve grown up,” co-director Chuko Esiri has said. “It’s where I live, it’s a place that influences me massively and those are the stories that I want to tell.”

* Next Screening, 1 July, BFI Southbank