AFRIFF 2025: Kalu Oji Discusses the Identity and Cultural Fragmentation in “Paso Faho”

Nigerian-Australian filmmaker, Kalu Oji is a filmmaker whose work explores the themes of identity, family and community. Pasa Faho, his feature directorial work screened at African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) to warm reception. The film, featuring Okey Bakassi and Tyson Palmer as father and son, follows the relationship between Azubuike, an Igbo Nigerian father and Obinna, his biracial son. Set in Melbourne in Australia, the film feels and sounds Igbo. 

Written and directed by Oji, the film is central to the Igbo Nigerian and diasporan community experience. In this interview with Culture Custodian, Oji speaks about the film’s reception at AFRIFF, the cultural and identity fragmentation immigrants experience and fatherhood. 

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

AFRIFF feels like homecoming. How does it feel to screen Pasa Faho at AFRIFF in Lagos, a major hub for African cinema, after a successful run in Australia and what kind of reception were you anticipating? 

It does feel like a homecoming in a way, for sure. The film was made entirely in Australia, but it’s specifically an Igbo and Nigerian film. Although I wasn’t certain of the film’s reception, I knew our Nigerian screening would be special. The film doesn’t fit a traditional mold of a Nigerian, Hollywood and Australian film. It exists in this kind of liminal and strange space. Thus, the responses, since it started screening in Melbourne and America, have been really beautiful to witness. Unmindful of the international screenings, I was very curious to bring it to Nigeria, where Nollywood is big, and see how Nigerians would engage with it. And to be honest, the responses have been incredible and one of the most special experiences to me. It was the first time watching the film with Okey Bakassi and my relatives who haven’t seen my work before. The audience actively engaged with the film and that is really special.  

Your work explores the African-Australian identity and experience. What prompted this artistic direction? 

As a filmmaker, my work is both interrogative and responsive. I take from my surroundings and create cultural artifacts as a way of understanding my surroundings and share with the audience. Personally, my arts are a reflection of the body and emotions I live with. I walk through the world as an African-Australian and that identity will follow me to everywhere and continent I go to. Although later in my career, I might branch out from making films about the African-Australian identity but for now, that’s how I view the world. And, with Pasa Faho, I want to explore these themes that are very important to how I navigate and view the world as an African-Australian. 

The film carries a distinctive Igbo and Nigerian identity from the language, music and actors choice. Can you talk about the writing and directorial choices you made to achieve this authenticity? 

The film does feel like that. The Igbo community in Melbourne has different cultures and languages. That rich language, music, food and knitted community created a diaspora community that’s not culturally far from home. The film, I reckon, speaks broadly to this experience in Australia. When I set out to make the film, these are the cultural details I wanted to capture in a collaborative way. For the development, I converse with a lot of people and workshopped the script. These conversations and workshops around the film’s ideas and themes colour the film with different perspectives. Thus, the “authenticity” you spoke about, comes from this process. As the writer-director, I have a singular voice, but the film was shaped by  many voices and hands during the pre-and-post production process.

Kalu Oji

The dynamic between the father, Azubuike, and his son, Obinna, is central to the film. What was your process for developing these characters and their complex relationship?

At its core, the film is about fatherhood and the relationship between a son and his father. I wrote this film because of the questions I have about fatherhood. These questions will continually be there even when I start having kids. For the film, I wanted to capture the nuanced complexity of that father-son relationship. I had a lot of thoughts and I wanted to dig into them. 

Azubuike is the archetypal Igbo and Nigerian man socialised to have the provider mindset. Why was it important to show him being vulnerable and truthful about his financial struggles with Obinna? 

The questions I was asking about fatherhood made this scene important for me. The question about fatherhood is also about identity and “what it means to be a man.” An Igbo and Nigerian man has been socialized to be stoic, strong and enduring. These are the images I see around me and in myself. I have seen the cost of these ideas and it’s tiring and exhausting. The cost of these ideas is tiring and exhausting. 

The media present men like Azubuike as the norm. Bu, I have witnessed the power of having honest conversations. That scene, for me, was the crux of the film. In that scene, we see this man who holds strongly to his values being vulnerable to his son about his fears. At that point, he has come to realize that those values mean nothing unless there’s honesty in the relationship. It’s empowering to admit weakness and unburdened oneself from expectations. That was the heart of the film. 

The film touches on minimal cultural tensions to carry the different worldview Azubuike and Obinna holds. Can you discuss the significance of these smaller, everyday moments in highlighting the characters’ different worlds and perspectives?

Thematically, I wanted the film to be rich and weighty. Fatherhood, identity, ancestry, religion and race relations are heavy subjects. But, I wanted to address them in a quiet way. I am naturally inclined towards films that deal with strong subjects and themes in a subtle way. The pressures of migration shouldn’t always be shown by someone drowning. Race relation films don’t need to have a black body been killed or arrested. When writing Pasa Faho, I wanted to talk about these subjects in a way that felt honest and nuanced to me. That meant the writing process had me looking for those small moments that highlight these big themes. As the script continually gets refined I was convinced that these everyday moments which others might see as being surface level speak to something much larger. 

The film’s title, Pasa Faho, is a play on the phrase “parts of a whole.” As a Igbo-Austarailian filmmaker, what are your thoughts about identity, family, culture and community fragmentation occasioned by migration?  

My thoughts are always evolving. What I wanted to capture with this film is the real-life negation that happens when you take a strong and rich culture or community and place it within a different cultural context and community that has its own strong identity. This negation is an ongoing reality for the migrating community. When we talk about the Igbo community in present day Australia, this negotiation happens in terms of how they navigate space and cultural identity. What cultural identity do you bring from home and which do you leave behind and compromise on are constant conversations. To learn, grow and adapt into these multiple perspectives and cultures is a beautiful thing. But there’s also some kind of tension and friction within this too. And that’s what I wanted to capture in the film. 

The film explores that diasporic tension that migrants can universally relate to. How did you balance capturing the specificity of the Igbo-Australian experience with exploring themes that are universally relatable?

This was something I was very conscious about when I was writing the film. I wanted to capture the specificity of the Igbo community Melbourne but also the sound and feeling of the surrounding communities. There have been these waves of migration into Melbourne. The immigrants and the communities they built often crystallize with the first generation becoming the second and third. These patterns are what I was curious about. The film also has a Greek immigrant. This character is important in showing the overlapping between the immigrant communities in Australia. Also, I wanted to show how this community is interacting with everything around them. 

What’s the Nigerian and African distribution plan for the film? 

We are particular about showing the film in Nigeria and on the continent. Pasa Faho is a conversation between the diaspora and the motherland and the homeland, the fatherland. We are finding distribution. The film’s reception at AFRIFF further excited me and the production team about the possibility of it getting a release across Africa. The post-screening conversations have been rich and engaging. Hopefully, we get a distribution deal soon.