E29 • Shoot First, Ask Questions Later • AFOLABI OLALEKAN, dir. of ‘Freedom Way’ at the Toronto Int. Film Festival

In this episode, Afolabi Olalekan discusses the vibrant Nigerian film industry, dubbed Nollywood, and his latest film, Freedom Way, which premiered at the Toronto Int. Film Festival. His past inspirations include Cary Fukunaga’s ‘Beasts of No Nation’ and ‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind’, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Afolabi shares the challenges he and his crew faced during production, such as police corruption and the need to swap out his lead actors halfway through filming. He also stresses the importance of using storytelling to create social change, highlighting the power of cinema to address societal issues.

Afolabi reflects on his journey as a filmmaker, and the personal growth experienced through his creative process. He also talks about his future projects and the significance of film festivals like TIFF.

Like, subscribe and follow us on our socials @pastpresentfeature

Chapters

• 0:01 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:19 Introducing Filmmaker Afolabi Olalekan, dir. of 'Freedom Way' at TIFF
• 3:40 'Freedom Way' - A Deep Dive into the Film
• 6:40 The Creative Process: From Script to Screen
• 9:31 Challenges in Filmmaking: Reshooting and Refinement
• 12:21 The Power of Storytelling: Creating Change through Film
• 15:13 Post-Production Insights: Editing and Sound Design
• 18:27 The Journey to TIFF: Festival Acceptance and Impact
• 21:11 Personal Reflections: The Filmmaker's Journey
• 24:29 Future Projects: What's Next
• 27:08 'The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind' + 'Beasts of No Nation'
• 30:50 Filmmaker Advice + Why Make Films

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:02)

Welcome to the Past Present Feature podcast.

Marcus Mizelle (00:19)
In this episode, Afalabi Alalekin discusses the vibrant Nigerian film industry, dubbed Nollywood,

and his latest film, Freedom Way, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film

His past inspirations include Keri Fukunaga's Beats of No and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, directed by Chewidl Eziofora.

Afalabi shares the challenges he and his crew face during production, such as police corruption and the need to swap out his lead actors halfway through filming. He also stresses the importance of using storytelling to create social change, highlighting the power of cinema to address societal issues. Afalabi reflects on his journey as a filmmaker.

and the personal growth experienced through his creative process. and the significance of film festivals like TIFF.

Marcus Mizelle (01:04)
Nigerian film industry is very interesting. The little bit that I know, second largest global film industry in terms of output after that of India. The term Nollywood, a portmanteau of Nigeria and Hollywood can encompass Nigerian films made outside Nigeria as well as English language.

What's like the biggest Nigerian movie ever? Is there something that comes to mind? What about Nigerian directors? Besides yourself, of course. You got any favorites or any suggestions for our audience?

There's a whole lot of people. That's two right there, That's two right there. Yeah, the names could go on and on for weeks. Okay. For Nigerian filmmakers, obviously it's a big draw. If you got the second biggest film industry in the world, as far as output, then what is it about filmmaking for Nigerians, you think, that gets them going, that produces so much output? I think it's like a way for Nigerians to escape reality, in a sense. Because there's a whole lot going on in the country.

And the grounds came up, things just hold up going on. And films is definitely a way for people to escape that reality. Because we are like people that find like a little joy in everything. Matter, chaotic, everything. They are the little moments of little pockets of joy that we find here. Essentially, not only when I'm afro-beat. Those are the two things that we used to escape reality a lot. And film is definitely one of the strongest beats to do that. Got a Nigerian proverb. Only the thing for which you have struggled will last. You ever heard that before? Yeah. Yeah.

That pretty much sums up a lot of Nigerian mentality, actually. It's like when someone gives you something, you don't essentially take care of it like when you hustle for it. Got you. More gratitude, yeah. That's beautiful. I'm excited, I've had lot of European filmmakers and Asian filmmakers and, of course, American filmmakers, and it's just nice to mix it up. I mean, would you say your film, Freedom Way, is on its way to TIFF, and you premiere what, in two weeks, three weeks? It's this weekend, man.

It's crazy because all these film festivals happen at the same time. Like you've got Telluride, you've got Toronto, Venice, Deauville, New York Film Festival coming. I cannot even keep up. Okay, so your film, would you say Freedom Way, is it a typical Nigerian type film? Because I don't know what to compare it to. I haven't seen many Nigerian films. It is very well made, shot, acted, great movie, very just clean and slick and pacing is nice and the acting is great. Let me just read the synopsis for the

A startup faces unfavorable government laws and police harassment, causing a ripple effect in the lives of nine individuals, setting them up on a collision course. And then a further detailed synopsis. Software developers Thimba, played by Jesse Suntelli, Entaio, Mike Afo-Ok, woo, have finally launched their latest venture, EasyGo, a new ride share app to connect Lagos State's busy commercial motorcyclists, all the Okada riders.

Riding high on capital investments and credible government assurances, the young South African and Nigerian duo can finally envision the fruits of their labor. But after a night of celebrating, the business partners confront a pernicious roadblock familiar to all Nigerian youth, police. Routine extortion, however, will turn out to be the least of their concerns. I mean, it reminded me of the shirt that I have on. Lahane?

police corruption and the police, this oppressive entity, you know, is a shared antagonist in that way. And two to three characters over the course of a short time span. Those are all things your film have in common with this movie. And this is one of my top five movies of all time. But as far as just the simplicity, the strength of the struggle that, you know, that the characters are going through, the relatability that the characters are going through, I think a lot of areas in the world can relate to...

Corrupt entities, police, whatever, taking advantage of the people, right? Governments taking advantage of their people. Bureaucracy is taking advantage of their people. I think that's a universal thing for sure, but let's just get into your movie and the inspiration for this movie. Like what made you make this film? There's a lot of factors. The film was written as a short film by my friend, who's also the producer and the writer of the film, Blaise Nuzi. He wrote it as a short film first. And I think at some points looking at the short film,

think she quickly realized that they could do better as a future because cramping all of the ideas and all of the stories of different pockets of individuals into the short film was probably going to water it down a lot. I feel like we could make it into the future, probably sell the idea a lot more. And right at the time in Nigeria, so many things were happening at the same time. We had the ban of the Okada riders. We had the issue of police harassment going on.

And then we had one major issue, was the campaign going on at the time about treat first, ask questions later. was a situation where by if, for instance, if the gunshot victim is found somewhere or is taken to the hospital, for instance, the doctors want to get the police report first before treating him, which was ridiculous because then the person is... That's the end. So it's like a campaign going on at the time where it was like treat first and ask questions later. All of those ideas together, like now from a little what we have freedom with.

So she went ahead and wrote the entire feature. And when I read the first scripts, because I was always part of the entire process from when she was writing everything. And when I read the first draft of the script, I think getting to the first few pages of where we had the first police harassment, I just knew that, OK, this is definitely a film we want to shoot. This is definitely a story we want to tell. And from then on, we just went ahead and made several drafts on the film. And today we have an entire film talking about this subject matter. You said seven drafts?

several, had about five drafts, I think. As far as the script writing process and you collaborating with the screenwriter, how do you know when it's ready? I think you never know when it's ready, be honest. I think as creators, we are very critical of ourselves and our own work that look at every single picture. Okay, except maybe when you finally get to shoot it, you get into post, you look at it. At some point, you never know when it's ready until someone taps you and, okay, it's fine. Just leave it, it's fine. Just wait on another one to go.

get to a point where we feel confident enough to say, this is a film where we should meet. I'm still trying to re-edit my movies I put out five years ago. You know, it's bad, it's a bad hit. It's like, ain't never ready. We definitely have, we definitely have couple of things like that as well. So what did it look like for you once you had the script done and you moved into financing and pre-production? Like how did that work out? How did you get this movie off the ground from script to screen? Yeah.

Stories of Freedom Way is long. We could definitely record hours and hours of footage explaining how Freedom Way came to be because it was very hard film to make. But it was tough on every single person making the film, especially for the production part of it. It was a lot of work. We are from scripts. Then we went into casting. We casted a couple of people that we were very sure of their acting prowess and we were sure they were going to appreciate exactly what we were trying to create. We went into shortlist, all of that.

Director of Photography, DOP from South Africa, Kabilo Tati, one of the best guys out there. Brought him Yeah, beautiful film. We to film this for us. We were on the same page, kind of creating an amazing film. I think we shot for about 25, 27 days, am I correct? Okay. I think after we got almost to the end of the film, to the end of days of shooting, I think myself and the producer, we realized that we were not setting out to make the kind of film we wanted to make. The film didn't feel like it was supposed to feel like.

So we went back and we recasted some of the characters, especially a few of our lead characters. We recasted some of the characters. Then we had to go back on set a couple of months after and we shoot a couple of scenes and shoot a lot more scenes just to make it feel like we feel when we read the scripts, essentially. I'm glad that we did that because the film feels a lot better than it did when we shot the first time. There was a lot going on making of this film. Hold on, let me break that part down. How much did you reshoot once you went back? How many days wise? How much did you go back and reshoot?

Maybe percentage-wise, we probably had shot about 70 % of the film, and we had to shoot about 50 % of that film. Damn! That's crazy. But that right there, it's refinement too, right? It's dedication to refining. Yeah, we shot that in shorter days than we even did the first time. I think about 15 days, I think. That's not shit. So yeah, I'm glad those happened, because then I think that's what made us make the film we have today, because...

It's like the pressure that we're under, the timing, all of that made us create the Because I was going for a very... I think I was going for a kind of different film earlier, the first time, because the camera was moving a lot. had stuff going on But the second time coming on set, I think I quickly realized that there's moments where the camera just needed to stay and we didn't need to move the camera. Yeah. And that happened because we didn't have enough time to set up the camera to move. We were like...

You know what I think is actually better for the emotion at the moment? If the camera just stays static. And that helped us move faster. And I think I appreciate this more now. The process of doing that was, yeah, was crazy, but yeah, it makes a lot of sense now. This is my favorite part of the conversation so far. Because it's like simplicity is king. We try to do too much sometimes. know what it's like making a movie where I'm trying to move that camera. I thought I had justifications on why I did this camera move, et cetera.

Looking back, I wish I would have went handheld on a lot of it. Not because it would have been easier, which it would have been, but also it just would have been more effective. But it's so interesting. That's cool. It's almost if you gave two different people the same movie, the same script, the same budget, whatever, and then they went and did it in two different ways. They would do it in two different ways, inevitably. It's just two different movies. Even if you have the same script and the same resources, a lot of times it's in you being the same filmmaker, but going back and reshooting half the movie, it sounds like almost.

in a different way, does it feel like two different movies? It does. I feel like if I go back and edit the previous scenes, it'll feel like an entirely different film. A really interesting kind of practice. We've made short films that we turn into feature films and based off of a key scene or a sizzle, and then we would go back and reshoot that one scene. We've done that several times, but to reshoot almost half of a movie? I mean, you gotta have known the ins and outs better of each scene too, right? After you've done it once.

to go back in as far as what the scenes are about, how to direct the actors, what you want more and more. Yeah, I'm curious what that was like to revisit these scenes. What did you find came to you easier? Before you answer, even yesterday I was filling out an application for a film lab and their server was messed up. And so it lost like my questionnaire answers. And so I had to go back in and retype all this stuff out. And when I went to go back and do it again, they were even better because I knew what I wanted. I was pissed when I lost it. But then like when I went back in, I was like, shit, this is like even better now.

So that's what I'm thinking about randomly. But yeah, what was it like to go back in? What else did you find was easier or better because you did it a second time? think the kind of dance we were playing with camera, I think it was a lot better camera-wise. And I also had a of clarity in terms of how I wanted the film to feel like, in terms of lighting and also the actors. Working with the actors was a lot better because now I understood exactly what each character should sound like.

Like the scenes where we have the policeman, for instance. The first time we shot him, it was good. But the second time, it was better. But now it was like, okay, you did this the first time, but I think you could do this now. Because now it's a lot more effective than what we had before. Where the film flows, it's almost like it starts very happy and go very downhill. So I wanted the lights not to feel that same way. Almost like from the beginning of the film, it's very bright and happy and we have colors in the production design. First time we see the power...

First time we see the family as well. We see they have a very colorful interior, production design, everything is very colorful. have a couch, chairs, curtains, all of that. And as the film progresses, we strip all of that away. And now we begin to see a lot more darkness in the film, a lot more darker colors, darker tones. Even for wardrobe, wardrobe began to change. It looks like we're wearing very darker outfits than the bright colors. So that kind of gave me lot more clarity on how to approach that. There are very subtle details that

A lot of people might not necessarily notice. That's directing, baby. Yeah. The first time we see our main character, our Biola, his first introduction shot, the first thing we see in the film is a Bible. And as the film progresses, the first time we clock him into a darker character, we see money in the shot instead of the Bible. It's the exact same shot, but now we're putting his money instead of Bible. That's like It's like contrast, juxtapositions, opposites, mirroring, the tools of a good storyteller.

where you're just operating on a spectrum. So doing it a second time helped us think about sort of this a lot more, deeper. And how we can approach what I've done before, how can I make it lot better? And I think we were able to achieve that. And the first time we shot as well, we didn't have a South African actor in it. We had the three of them, the two tech guys and the lawyer were all Nigerians. And going back the second time, I think we were able to add a bit of spice to it somehow.

And we said, you know what, let's add a South African in the mix. Let's have a Nigerian and a South African, and we took the co-founders of this project. So we got Jesse Suntele from South Africa. He's also coming to the country and also films. And he was an amazing actor, true and true. So yeah, was eye-opening to be able to do that. Did you replace all of your leads? We replaced two of them. Two of them, okay. Then about, I think, two other supporting actors. I'm just curious if you want to talk about it. How did you approach the previous actors and break the news to them that you had to...

Swap them out. Like a good producer, okay. Staying with production. What about financing and how did you guys secure resources and how to make it? How did you overachieve with what you had to work with? If that makes sense.

what you want to do and say, but going to put my money behind you to make this film. It was an producer and also a director, but that was solely her to deal with that particular part of the filmmaking. And it was quite stressful doing that while we were filming because while we filming, we had a lot of people who said, I'm on board to give you money for this film. And then when we started filming, it's like everybody decided to back down from it. So now we're left to start production with that fund.

We had to go every single day to make sure she found money from one person to one place or the other. And every single day as we were filming, I'm calling her, are we able to the camera today? Because I wasn't sure each day we were going to roll the camera, but we're going to be able to film. But then every single day she'd be like, don't worry about it. Just keep filming. I'll figure this out. And try and figure it out. We just kept filming day after day. And we got to the end of the film. So I tell you, yeah, she was very instrumental in making sure that we were able to achieve.

the vision we set out to achieve. I'm glad I asked that question, though. That's good stuff right there. So every day almost, you didn't know if you the money for tomorrow, but you just kept your head down, kept rolling, kept going. And now you're in Toronto, baby. Damn, TIF. Anything else you want to talk about for production? Anything that's worth talking about? Any highlights, challenges that come to mind? I think we had a couple of pickups for this film, and I was going to add an additional scene to it, because right after we finished filming, I had one of...

the craziest experiences with the police. Like a lot of ideas for the scenes in the film, I probably see they are real stories that have happened. People that I either know or blessing knows or people that are friends of a friend. And some of them have happened to us personally. Like the first police harassment scene for instance happened to her and a friend while they were going in the car. And the policeman stopped them and asked them for a receipt of the laptop they had in the car. That happened. And I think when we finished filming, I got arrested a couple of days after.

for retrying, no reason. In fact, I would say I got abducted. Who did? I think later that night at 8 p.m., I was leaving the studio going home and it just stopped me asking a few questions. I was answering them. They didn't get good enough answers they thought they wanted. And next thing I know, I'm in Coughs, I'm in the back of the bus. And as we were moving, this was around like 8 p.m. at night, as we moving down to the station, they are doing the exact same thing to every single young person they see along the way.

So now we are like five to six people in this police van that have done absolutely nothing. And we're just headed to a station for them to get there. And they say, okay, now you have to bail yourself out. You have to pay a certain amount of money to bail yourself out. We paid and we're out. And like, okay, you just wanted to just get money from us essentially. So there are lot of people that go through this every single day in the country, which is why I think this film is very important that we made because then...

also lends voice to like every single person going through this and we're able to show the world and say, yo, this is what's happening in our country. And also show the world that this is what's happening and this is how we can lend our voices to say, okay, let's begin to find a solution to it, essentially. Change can come from filmmaking. It's real, it's true. And especially if you get a big enough platform like Toronto, damn, sorry to hear you got to deal with that. But also when that was happening a few days after you rapped, did you feel like you had a little something in your back pocket? Did that motivate you even more?

Like something to fight back with, your film? The next day I called Bleson and I was like, I think we need to add one more scene into the film. This just happened to me. I said, okay, send me a voice. I sent out a voice and I read every single thing. I said, okay, I'm going to write this and let's see if you can add it. But I think a few days before we shot it, we realized that it's probably going to be a lot to deal with. And it's probably also going to affect the flow of the film. It's a story worth telling, it's a story worth putting into the film. But then we don't want to jeopardize the story we currently have. Because we have a good enough story.

It's interesting enough to add into it, to add lot more spice and stuff into it, but then it didn't feel a lot necessary at the time to add it. Just maybe we'll make it into another film. Just maybe. I'm sure it affected the edit. Making a film that needs to be made and not just something that you're doing for yourself, but something that's also just needs to be said, the power of that is beautiful. Talk about the importance of making a film that can potentially create change. And then also, what kind of change would you hope to realistically have this film create?

possibilities that you see this film creating in your neck of the woods from premiering on an international stage? Yeah, I think what this film would do is bring a lot of awareness as opposed to create an effective immediate change. And that's because growing up in Nigeria as filmmakers, we are also not delusional to understand that we can make a film to make the government change that quickly by snap of finger, just by making one film.

It takes a long time to affect the kind of change we're looking. So I think this is just one voice out of a thousand voices, millions of voices in fact. The voices need to continue. This is just a little way of contributing to the millions of voices already running in the country. And just say, okay, this is our own experience. This is what we've seen and this is how we think we can make stuff better. And then every other person coming in from one place or the other, we have 36 states in the country. So everybody bringing their voices and everything into the conversation. This is like a good start.

for that to happen. think being on a big stage like Toronto, like Toronto National Film Festival is great because then we are essentially bringing our own fight in from a higher platform. So now every other person, you know, bringing up their voice as well just to help elevate what we are already seeing. And you say, okay, this is what this film is saying and this is what we are seeing as well. Yeah, because it is a seed and you never know how big that thing can get really. What about post-production? How long did it take for you to edit this movie? What did the editing look like?

I edited the film myself. Editing was quite easy because it was shot in very particular ways. Like I said, coming back to shoot a second time didn't give us enough time to sit around. I said, we're going to do 10 takes. There are particular scenes that have just one take each. Every single character has So if they didn't nail it in that one take, would they have enough time to reshoot it? We need shoot this now or we need to go.

We have a couple of scenes like that. Editing was quite easy because I knew exactly how I was going to be edited. So if a character here was going to greet another character, I shoot these characters greeting, I shoot the response, and I just merge that together and post. So I knew that I had no extra room to cut back and forth. It was just those two shots, it's just shooting those pockets of conversations and just going with that. I think that's pretty much the most interesting part of our post-production. But aside from that, we also did a sound audio post.

We didn't do that in Nigeria, we did that in Uganda. We had some amazing guys and so they worked on sound, score. Let me just say real quick, the post sound people, gosh, I just finished a project that I was producing and they took some terrible sound. You had people that weren't even mic'd up. And now, like the final mix that they did, they mic'd up. It's like, how am I hearing you so So, God bless these post sound magicians.

You know, it ain't sexy on the outside, but man, I respect and love them so much. They will save your movie, potentially. 100%. Because things happen. It's hard to get clean audio sometimes. You in a rush, you're moving, or there's a motorcycle in the back, or whatever it might be. The wizardry that these people perform is crazy. Wow. Anyways, had to go there. I don't think I've talked too much about that on this podcast yet. It's like, so valuable. And people, don't notice it unless it's not there, right? That's what it is. Exactly. Okay, how many scenes slash shots?

do you have where you only have one take? What would you say percentage-wise? At still 20%. Damn. That's amazing. The location that we're probably giving permission for like, only like an hour to shoot in. And we had to figure out how to light that and shoot that in an hour. It makes me think of a movie we did eight years ago, whatever, we were shooting in the Hollywood Hills, and it was a great location, but we had a very limited amount of time. Anyways, we were down to the wire. We had one big whole scene.

that was very important to the movie. And we had like an hour to shoot it. And it was two main characters with some extras. I got one take with two cameras. And I was like, we ain't got this. I don't know, man. It feels good, but I don't even know if we got it. And long story short, it's one of the best scenes in the movie. And props to the actors also for handling business. How is this the best scene in the movie? It does something to you as far as when you know you got all the time and all the, but when you know you got to get down to it, you do. You find a way. And like it ends up, it translates.

Exactly. It's a game to play. You don't want to have to do it. But is something good in that pressure? Yeah, think the pressure sometimes is good. I was telling someone a couple of days ago about I found a short film on YouTube and I really loved it. I was like, this short film is really good. And I had to get in contact with the filmmaker to ask him a few questions about the film. He spoke about the budget of the film. I mean, he had to shoot. It felt like not enough budget and stuff. And a friend of mine said,

she wants to get this filmmaker a budget to make a proper film. And I said, the moment you do that, it might make a shitty film. Because now he's got to make a really good film with this. I feel like that pressure creates a really good film. But it meant you give him a lot more budget. Now it feels like he has a lot to play around with. Because moments where he's trying to shoot a very close-up shot because he doesn't have enough money for production design. And he's actually doing close-up shots, keeping the moments, the emotions of the actor that is crying. And now when he has budget, he can do a wide shot and show how beautiful his production design is.

Now he's lost the moment of that actor. So that might not help him in the way he's meant to. So I think that the pressure and the limitation sometimes, in some cases, really helps him to explore and Having those parameters, it's such an interesting thing. I need more, I need more. Do you need more, Obviously you want to respect your people working with you and you want to pay people what they need to get paid to justify their time and all this. But sometimes let's just roll the sleeves up and get it done. Let's just go.

And it's beautiful what you can come up with when you do have almost like a survival mentality. I keep talking about this, but the value of a little bit of struggle sprinkled in there. So talk about the path between you got the film done and then what happened between that and getting accepted into the Toronto International Film Festival. We didn't get the film finished in post before we submitted for the festival. So I think we're like maybe like about 80 % done in the entire post-production process and

The producer was also looking for opportunities to get the film on streaming platforms. And she called me one day and spoke about, think we should submit this for the festival. And it made sense also because the characters being interconnected was an inspiration from the 2004 crash. the movie crash? Yeah, the movie crash. Paul Haggis film. That also premiered at TIFF. So I like, I think my big good thing to also premiere this at TIFF, if that was the case. I'm like, yeah, I think so too. And yeah.

We put it in for a submission and a couple of, I think, weeks later, we just got an email for the selection. I was like, OK. Dag, and they just said, yeah, you in. You in. Come on. That was how it went down. Very cool. Let's just talk about Crash then real quick, because that question was coming. Like, what past films inspired you to make this? Or you in general as a filmmaker? Crash. Talk about that film, what it means to you, and how it helped motivate or inspire or whatever it might have done when you made Freedom Hill.

This question will definitely be something for blessing a lot more as a writer because she really likes to film. And I think I'd watched it before. And when she told me about it, I went and watched it again. And then I understood exactly what she had in mind. I was like, yeah, I get the point. It was not just how can we connect the characters. Because then relating that back to Nigeria is almost like everything affects everybody. It's no matter the class, no matter the age, no matter where you are. You could be rich, you could be wealthy, you could be poor, you could be middle class.

Whatever affects the middle class, it can affect the poor, it can affect the rich, one way the other. So I didn't know we were all connected. So it just made sense, but that would be a way to present the film, as everybody's in another. Nice. Any favorite films that you got for you overall? If you had a bad day, or if you had to put one film on the TV on your little desert island, what would it be? Not exactly. I think for me, it's either going to be Queen of Katwe, or The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, or Beast of No Nation.

One of those three films. the Kari Fukunaga movie with Idris Elba? Yes, yes that. What was the other? The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Queen of Katwin. Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, 2019 film directed by and starring Chewedo Ezioforo. I love Chewedo. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a 2019 drama film written and directed and starring Chewedo Ezioforo and his feature directorial debut. The film is based on the memoir of the same name by William Kamkwamba and Brian Miller. 2019 Sundance.

Film festival, streamed on Netflix. What about this film? What do you love about this movie?

and everybody now understands exactly where they're coming from and what they're about. So I think it's the idea that gets me in those two films. I think it's really the same thing in Beast of No Nation as well. Like you see the boy, you follow through his changes and you see how he grows into this particular life that he has come to know. That has come to know and has come to be part of. Yes, I think it's that for me. Where they basically enter a new world and then they adapt. Exactly.

Hero's Journey is definitely an old worthy classic structure, isn't it? It just works. I feel like that's a bit of a Hero's Journey. They leave the cave and they go into the world and they say, this is a whole new thing. What do I do now? So the commonalities between these films and your films, it sounds like there's some. I've been discovering as a filmmaker just now recently what I'm about.

what I'm trying to say. And it took me like forever to realize that. Cause you start out, you're trying to make stuff that you might be accidentally paying homage to, or you're trying to be like your favorite films or filmmakers or whatever, at least in my case. And then I asked myself, what am I contributing? What actually do I need to say? And once I discovered that it's, my God, I have a clarity now and I already did it. I already made these films, particularly the documentaries.

where the commonalities end up being these underdogs going up against these systems in place. And so my question to you is, what is your bread and butter? I can guess at it, but what do you think your bread and butter is as far as a storyteller is concerned? I think there's quite a lot, especially as a Nigerian who makes films in Nigeria, there's a lot of things that I want to say. Because most of the films that we have come out of Nigeria,

there's a higher percentage of comedy than there is of acting, drama, serious films. And that's because, like I said from the beginning, everybody wants to escape reality. So sometimes I think for me, I see a mental stock in the reality and I want to create films that maintain and remain in this reality. While you are going as far as escaping from the reality, when you are done with that, you come back and let's come back and face that reality and talk about what we're going through currently. Definitely not every single film sometimes we want to make very fun, Josephine.

laugh about it. I always want to stay within a place where I can always talk about something. We can always feel something on what you found out and be able to reflect on not just ourselves but like society in general. What you got next? You got a next project in mind? Yeah, there's a couple of stuff we've been developing. Some series, some features, couple of other shots as well. That stuff we're just developing, trying to see how we can create our own, you know, more freedom ways.

That makes sense. Okay, as far as your filmmaking journey, what is your first memory of being a filmmaker and also like, why do you do this? That's an interesting one, actually. Because it's hard work. It's fun at first, but then it becomes work. And then like, why do we do this? It started with curiosity. I was always like a very curious child. I was trying to find out what people were thinking without asking them. I was trying to reach people. I was trying to create people's mindsets just by looking at them.

And so I think my first memory of even being on set while I was really young, maybe like around six, seven-ish, the music video being shot in our house. This crew had come in and rented our place, like a compound out just shooting music video. And they had a green screen up. I was quite confused at that because then I remember challenging the director and being like, green is such an ugly color. Why not use like a blue or red? And they were like, no, it's not going to work for what we're doing. And he was trying to explain to me about it, but I didn't get it.

So I think a couple of months down the line, I saw the same video on TV, but now the green screen was no longer there, and the characters were floating in the air and things of that kind. And I was like, where is that green background? So that curiosity was what kind of sparks in me that I started looking for ways to find out what's going on in this place. I don't think I've had any major career interests since that level. And I've gone through different visual journeys in my life from music videos to content to commercials. I've done several things, just try finding a new...

curious way to attempt every single thing. And landing on films now is a films is large, it's extensive. So my curiosity sparks a lot of films. And now I'm interested in seeing how far can I push this. What would you tell your earlier filmmaking self when you were starting out? What would you tell that version of you? I'm going to be a sentence that I'll say, that is not stupid. Because I've made a lot of stuff that I'd never put out. Short films, in lot of content I never put out. And that's because I always

I'm very critical of myself and I look at them like, that seems stupid. That seems silly. I just shove the drive somewhere and move on. So I think I'll probably say that's not stupid. That's not silly. Just put it out. I think it represents growth. It shows people what you've been through, how you've progressed, where you were and where you are now. So yeah, I think I would say that is not stupid. I think just put it out. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and follow us on social media at past, present, future.

and let us know in the comments section what movies you're watching. Thank you so much for listening to the Past Present Feature podcast and we'll see you next time. Peace.