“A Good Call”: Five Lessons Behind Nollywood’s Highest-Grossing Film of 2026

In 2018, Nigerian actress and filmmaker Uzoamaka Power worked as a customer care agent at a call center. The lead actress and writer of Dammy Twitch’s directorial feature debut, Call of My Life, has shared this story multiple times. The first time, to my knowledge, was at the film’s post-AMVCA premiere, which attracted industry players, critics like myself, friends and family, and celebrities. Then, on 26th June, 2026, during the Taiwo Adeyemi-moderated conversation at Polygon, tagged A Good Call, the actress briefly shared this anecdote in response to a question. The conversation featured Dammy Twitch (the director), Blessing Uzzi (the producer), Uzomaka Power (the lead and writer), and Anita Ashiru (the production designer).

Document and Catalogue Daily Experiences 

The story Power shared marks the first steps towards making one of Nollywood’s 2026 most successful and highest-grossing titles. During her two-year stint as a customer care agent, as a dutiful and observant writer, she kept notes of her experiences, events, and people she met. Those notes, after multiple conversations, push, and trust from Uzzi, became the foundational block for Call of My Life. According to Power, Uzzi wanted to make a commercial, non-festival leaning, romantic film. After Power was enlisted as the writer, she dutifully began writing a script whose direction differed from their intentions. While workshopping ideas, Power mentioned to Uzzi a three-page writing she had done that chronicled people she met and experiences she had during her call center job. Uzzi loved and believed in the raw script, so another writing commenced. The lesson here is, as a writer or filmmaker, it’s important to catalogue daily experiences. They might hold the right ingredients to make a successful Nollywood film.

As a Producer, Allow your Team the Liberty to Dream

As a producer, allow your team to dream. Filmmaking is unforgivingly expensive and unpredictable. In Nollywood, where producers rely on venture capitalists, investors, banks, and personal funding, a producer is constantly thinking about how to minimize expenses while honoring the soul and life of the story. Also, film is one of those ventures where the budget —thanks to unexpected geographic and logistics issues and random strokes of creative ideas—keeps expanding. As a producer-director, Uzzi allows her writer, director, and creative departments to dream. 

When Power was writing the script, she did not inhibit her creative flow by dangling the tight budget on her consciousness. Ditto Ashiru and others. As a creative producer, it’s important, she recounted, to allow your team the joy of creativity and dreaming. The creative process is sacred and should be enjoyable. That ability to dream uninhibited allows the writer, director, and others to create and bring the best version of their creative self to the project. After writing and prepping for production, spontaneous choices could be made for budgetary reasons but it’s important to allow creatives to thrive. “We’ll find a way to do it without breaking the bank.”

Pick a Great Team and Work Consistently 

Work with a great team. Film, goes the cliché, is a collaborative medium. As part of their success story, Uzzi emphasized the importance of this. The producer, editor (Lekan Afolabi), cinematographer (Muhammed Atta), writer (Power), and director (Twitch) already have a working rhythm. Uzzi worked with Power on Zikoko Life’s short, My Body, God’s Temple; with Twitch on several Afrobeats videos and commercials; with Afolabi on Freedom Way; and with Atta on I Hate it Here, Freedom Way, My Body, God’s Temple, and others. These creative encounters had already established a working relationship that made filmmaking enjoyable. Thus, when they made Call of My Life, despite being the writer, director, and art director’s debut feature-length project and Uzzi’s first commercial project, that established creative relationship came in handy. The lesson here is simple: build your tribe and develop a filmmaking language. If Martin Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Christopher Nolan and his editors Lee Smith andJennifer Lame, Wes Anderson and his cinematographer Robert Yeoman, Tim Burton and his costume designer Colleen Atwood, Joel and Ethan Coen and their cinematographer Roger Deakins, and others have worked for decades, you can also form your circle.

Relationships are Great

Build the right relationships. Allow me to modify that, ‘build relationships with Afrobeats artists and Nigerian celebrities’.At the film’s premiere, which happened a day after the AMVCA, it’s important to note how it was populated with popular celebrities. When the film got to the cinema, the director, producer, and others on the team called in favors from their Afrobeats colleagues. This meant that, for the opening weekend and beyond, there were proximate watch parties that were impactful to the film’s success. The lesson is that, as an independent Nigerian producer, build relationships within and outside the film industry. They will come in handy soon. 

A Good Film is Better than Gold

Make a good film. Uzzi has severally emphasized the importance of making and telling a good story. The Afrobeats relationship, word-of-mouth, and strategic marketing might have attracted Nigerians to the cinema, but what kept them and made them fanatic believers and preachers of Call of My Life‘s gospel is how good the story is. There is a naive but proven theory that a good film finds its audience. Naive because, in Nollywood, there is a long list of well-told and artistic titles that are commercial ruin. But this is not the reality of Call of My Life. After the premiere, attendees became willing foot soldiers pushing the narrative of the film from one station to the next. The lesson here is this: strive to make a good film. Nigerians are not dull as we often project. 

Call of My Life is definitely an outlier. It’s an unusual story, marketing, and has an unprecedented success. As Uzzi shared, the film’s opening week was capped at 20 to 30M. The film’s opening weekend was a cumulative 78.2M. By the second weekend, there was an over 22% jump to ₦93.1M, pushing it past ₦222.2M in just 10 days. That 20%+ weekend-on-weekend increase is a first for Nollywood. The third weekend ended with 88.6M and a cumulative of 396.1M. As of the last report, the film has accrued 672M, making it the number 5 highest-grossing Nigerian films of all time. There’s already conversation about a sequel and the adoption of Call of My Life’s marketing strategy.