Beyond Convention: The Anatomy of Gender Expression in Ajay Abalaka’s “Girl-Boy” 

Gender dynamics form a crucial part of conversations around identity construction in the contemporary world. It is even more a polemical subject in societies like Nigeria that cling stubbornly to traditional and patriarchal values. Attempts to represent queerness in mainstream Nigerian film and television are resisted and stifled, either directly or indirectly, with the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) primarily raising shields against such films. An instance of institutional resistance is when Ìfé (2020), a romantic film about two queer Nigerian women who fall in love could not be released in Nigeria because of laws against same-sex relationships. The NFVCB had threatened prosecution, prompting the producers to release the film on YouTube for global access without restrictions. Other recent clear-cut cinema representations of queerness in Nigeria have come from indie filmmakers including Tunde Apalowo’s All The Colors of The World Are Between Black and White (2023) and Victor Njoku’s documentary This Is Love (2024). The latest addition to this growing repertoire, Ajay Abalaka’s thirty-minute documentary titled Girl-Boy (2025), explores the complexities of gender expression, societal pressure, and self-acceptance in Nigeria.

Girl-Boy dives into the lives of four ladies—Tinuke, Fred, Lara, and Emmanuella—through which the filmmaker explores the interrelationships of masculinity and femininity, and challenges societal norms regarding gender roles and expectations. Tinuke’s journey to self-discovery marks the opening of the documentary: she is in the midst of her friends when a stranger walks up to her and persistently asks if she is a girl or boy. Raised in a patriarchal home in Onitsha, Anambra, Fred forsakes playing football with her school’s male football team for her father’s sake who worries about her boyish fascination with the sport, and fears it will make her less desirable to men. Lara, born in Lagos, believes her tough and complicated upbringing, which involved hustling in the market, contributed to her developing a masculine demeanor. Emmanuella muses over her formative years in the company of male cousins and her mother’s strong personality as an attempt to make sense of her boyish appeal. “Women have been masculine before I was born, from time immemorial,” she says convincingly, emphasizing how a woman’s biological features and feminine proclivities do not necessarily deter her from taking up provisional and protective roles in the household.

Women have always been socialized to take on so-called masculine roles within the family and their communities at large. Married women work to support their husbands and fend for the family, and will offer protection in situations where the men are deadbeats or unavailable. In different parts of the world, women have also participated in active military operations and assumed other leadership responsibilities. This common knowledge validates the experiences of the women in the documentary.

As the women in Girl-Boy evolve, their struggles intensify. Their queer realities expose them to backlashes from family, peers, and social institutions. Tinuke and her friends are harassed and unlawfully detained by the police on spurious allegations of lesbianism—a microcosm of the threats to queer Nigerians, particularly those outside the gender binary. Fred faces embarrassment at a school Christmas party where her gender is questioned and encounters tension with her mother, especially after her father’s truth-sayer labels her a lesbian. Emmanuella has a half-sister who attributes her house arrangement to a man’s. Ella also often gets mistaken for a trans-man and, during an awkward episode with a government official, reveals her singlet to defend her gender. Lara reveals how her appearance reduces employment opportunities, citing the cases of organizations often seeking “a girl, not a boy-looking girl.”

Over time, the women reaffirm their identity, challenge gender norms, and embrace their individuality in a society that demands conformity. Tinuke receives the full acceptance of her parents as she takes complete ownership of her non-conformity. Fred relocates from Anambra to Abuja to escape familial pressures, severing communication from her father in the process, as she takes solace in a job in hope of better fortunes. “I just want to be handsome, I don’t like being sexy,” she says, highlighting her preference with persuasive instinct. Lara confidently embodies her masculinity, unafraid to defy societal expectations, while Ella proudly asserts her beauty and identity on her own terms, challenging traditional notions of womanhood.

The documentary puts together interviews with animations to capture the women’s individual and shared trails and triumphs in the quest for self-discovery and identity reclamation. Without the use of a narrator, the filmmaker confers narrative autonomy on the women, making each of them fully responsible for their stories without external interference. This emphasizes what Abalaka calls “the urgency of the societal failures they describe.” Another noteworthy technique in the documentary is the use of black-and-white and colour backgrounds to highlight an intentional atmospheric change. For much of the documentary, each of the four participants are cast in monochrome, which reinforces their initial respective internal and external identity conflicts; whereas the switch to colour at twenty seven minutes signifies a resolution and admittance of their unique identities.

Abalaka has highlighted the use of editing techniques such as fades and jump cuts, which helped to negotiate the boundaries between contemporary storytelling and memories enhanced by animations. She claims this animation style is rooted in the German Expressionist Art Movement—an early 20th-century artistic movement characterized by distortion and exaggeration, an overt reliance on subjective, emotional intensity, and the rejection of realism. “I chose not to include animated background characters, buildings, objects, and activities,” she buttressed. “Instead, I used abstract shapes and crooked lines, which serve as a metaphor for how I see Nigerian society.”

Through its immersive victim experiences, Girl-Boy invites us to participate in the war against gender-based prejudice and other forms of institutionalized discrimination in the contemporary Nigerian society. More importantly, the documentary effortlessly humanizes the women without discrediting their fears and weaknesses, so we do not merely see them as non-conforming individuals but also as an integral part of a multilayered and heterogenous society.

Girl-Boy was showcased at the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, which ran from March 19th to 30th, 2025.