Anjola Oladimeji’s Ntetee Foundation Brings Dazzling Mirage to University of Ibadan Students

When Tunde Kelani’s Dazzling Mirage came out in 2014, it joined the few Nollywood films with a positive, careful, and empathetic portrayal of sickle cell disease and its carriers. In 2026, Anjola Oladimeji, founder of Ntetee Foundation, an NGO primarily dedicated to sickle cell warriors and disadvantaged women, will be screening the film to students of University of Ibadan after a conversation on sickle cell and free genotype testing. The university drive is in partnership with Olohije Oyakhire’s Visions, Nollyphiles, The Nolly Guild, and The Health Law Network. September is designated globally as National Sickle Cell Awareness Month. This annual and month-long campaign was created to encourage research, increase awareness, and distribute information that counters myths and uninformed opinions about sickle cell and sickle cell warriors. Ntetee Foundation has been at the forefront of this in Nigeria, and its debut cinema-meets-advocacy programme is a way to further conversations around sickle cell. 

When asked why Dazzling Mirage is the perfect film to engage an analytical university audience within the confines of a university, Anjola points to Funmi’s (the lead character) wholeness. Although she lives with sickle cell, it isn’t the entirety of who she is. She has ambitions, friendships, family, love, a career, and dreams. “That matters to me because I encountered Dazzling Mirage as a university student during the film’s university tour that educates young people about sickle cell. I had just lost my father, who lived with sickle cell, so the film hit deeply. I remember crying so much that I started hiccupping afterwards. I also remember feeling very seen. The film gave me a way to engage with something I had experienced very personally, through a human story rather than a clinical explanation.” 

This experience informed the importance of the film’s return  to university halls. For Anjola, the goal is to create a space where young Nigerians can encounter sickle cell through storytelling, not through a pamphlet or a warning, and then have honest conversations about what they watched. “And for me, revisiting this film more than a decade later, in a university setting— the same place where I first encountered it, and even more so at my father’s alma mater—feels incredibly special. I honestly couldn’t have imagined a more meaningful place to begin this journey,” she told Culture Custodian. 

For decades, Nollywood has had a massive influence on youth culture. From styling, music, politics, to other areas of life, Nollywood storytelling has influenced individual choices. As Anjola expressed, Nollywood provided a different entry point into something she is familiar with. This informs the question of how screening a feature film helps break the clinical fear or stigma around genotype testing in a way that health pamphlets cannot. A pamphlet can accurately explain genotype and why testing matters. But film and storytelling allows for some understanding, however little, of what it means to live with sickle cell. 

In Dazzling Mirage, we bear witness to Funmi’s relationship, aspirations, struggles, and how sickle cell intersects with her quotidian activities. That human connection can make this somewhat clinical and frightening subject closer to home. The screening and genotype test, as Anjola shared, are complimentary. “You watch a story, you think about the realities behind it, you have some questions  and right outside the screening room, there is an opportunity to do something very practical: find out your genotype. We also want to move away from the idea that genotype testing is something you only think about when you are preparing for marriage. It is useful information about your own health and genetics, and young people should be able to approach it without fear, shame, or stigma.”

Ntetee’s activity has centered around advocacy. But this is the first time it is using this cinema-meets-advocacy model, and it believes it can be transformational for students and informs how Ntetee does its advocacy. Anjola believes her relationship with Dazzling Mirage is proof that a story can stay with you long after you leave the cinema. “I watched this film as a young university student, at a very difficult point in my life, and more than a decade later, I am still thinking about it. I am now organising a screening of that same film for another generation of young people. That is the kind of longevity we are interested in.”

Nigeria has an incredibly powerful storytelling culture, and Nollywood already reaches people in a way that many traditional awareness campaigns struggle to. Going forward, Ntetee Foundation is looking at partnering with filmmakers, film societies, cinemas, and young creatives, using stories as entry points into conversations around sickle cell and other health issues that are often difficult to discuss. Importantly, the foundation is keen about what happens post-screening. What conversations does it stir? What ripple effect does it create? Can it lead to testing, better information, greater empathy, or simply give someone the courage to have a conversation they might otherwise have avoided? “That is the direction we are interested in —using the emotional reach of storytelling to open the door, and then building something practical behind it. And if we can do that consistently, perhaps the next generation won’t only inherit the stories we have already told about sickle cell. They will have the opportunity to tell better ones.”