The recently released teaser for the second season of Blood Sisters has sparked a host of conversations. The most prominent is the debate about creative license and truth in filmmaking. Directed by Daniel Oriahi and Kayode Kasum, the crime thriller follows the adventures of Kemi (Nancy Isime) and Sarah (Ini Dima-Okojie) after Kemi accidentally kills Sarah’s fiancé. The forthcoming second season is meant to reveal the legal and familial consequences of their actions. However, at the moment, it is the depiction of the prison environment and inmate styling as seen in this teaser that has engendered a necessary discussion on creative license.
Freedom is the most defining hallmark of the artist and the essence of creativity. The very act of creating, whether music, painting, literature, or movies, requires the freedom to create. Artistic expressions and creative works are the output or evidence of the inherent license creatives have to create. It is this freedom that informs the idea of a “poetic license,” or “creative license,” which artists, particularly —in the context of this article— filmmakers enjoy.
Therefore, it is the freedom filmmakers have to tell or portray stories along the lines and depths of their imagination. The plot, characters, dialogue, settings, and narrative choices are expressions of the filmmaker’s creative freedom. This means, in furtherance of the ultimate vision of a project, a filmmaker can make inventions or omissions in order to deliver a narrative that accomplishes the artistic and dramatic goals of the work. A filmmaker may alter the sequence of events, overstate certain events and even distort the film’s settings.
Indeed, these imaginative expressions are usually necessary to adequately create both fictional ideas and factual events as cinematic products. In purely fictional films, the expression of creative license is at its fullest. There is a strong invention of characters, worlds, and events, without the obligations of factual accuracy. On the other hand, in more factual films, even when filmmakers are tethered to a factual occurrence, they still hold the license to create and express along the lines of their imagination.
For instance, in Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (2024), Bolanle Austen-Peters, in expression of her creative freedom, compressed timelines and reconstructed dialogues to heighten the dramatic stakes and enact decades of intense political activism into a narrative with a runtime of 91 minutes, without losing grip on the quality and consequential effect on the viewers.
But the exercise of a filmmaker’s artistic freedom is not particularly cut-and-dried. To what extent can a filmmaker determine the “fictional truth” of a work? It is often the case that works that draw from history or factual events impose on filmmakers a different burden, a kind of (moral) obligation that requires them to ensure that their artistic interventions do not undermine the essential truths or important details of the stories they set out to tell. This is common when it comes to movies that tell historic stories of communities or places that have suffered some form of acute violence, or pogrom, marginalisation, or stories talking about a societal problem that existed or exists in a given place, or even when it is a biopic of a person, whether living or historical. With documentaries, this obligation is heavier. The burden of truth increases in proportion to a film’s proximity to historical fact or lived and documented reality.
The reasons for this obligation are not hard to see. The alteration of documented realities and experiences through artistic voyages can inadvertently come off as a distortion of the truth of events that have happened or as an attempt to deny lived realities. For instance, a film that seeks to portray contemporary Nigerian sociopolitical realities would risk misrepresentation if it ignored the economic hardships, insecurity, and institutional failures that shape the lives of many Nigerians. To the same extent, misrepresenting the life of an icon in a biopic can disillusion public perception of that person.
Thus, there is a need for contextual authenticity when producing films of this nature. Anything shy of the required degree of authenticity ends up in a friction with the viewers’ imaginative resistance, especially those with proximity to the reality or historical occurrence the filmmaker attempts to portray. The viewers are trapped in a ‘frictionality puzzle’ as a result of their rejection of the filmmaker’s attempt to subvert the truth of reality by imposing what the viewers know to be false on an issue or event. In this dilemma, viewers are unable to accept what is being enacted as the truth, discrediting the film as propaganda or a revisionist attempt, and the work of an unreliable narrator.
The recognition of the truth of things is also particularly important in light of the cinema’s influence in defining and redefining public perception of a thing, a situation, or a memory. This influence can be endowed with permanence once adapted into a cinematic form and can continue to exert influence on future generations.
However, this obligation is not absolute and immune to artistic manipulation. Cinema is an extension of art, and art presupposes some degree of manipulation. A strict resistance to creative interference is to, in a way, rid the form of what makes it art. The question then is simply: at what point does artistic intervention begin to misrepresent what is (or was) real? This consideration embodies the question of what can and cannot be artistically manipulated.
To be quite straightforward, an intervention is controversial and may cause psychological friction when it distorts fundamental truths and realities of whatever is being portrayed. In other words, where an intervention does not alter details essential to the truth of a story, it is permissible. In this light, a filmmaker may recreate dialogues and conversations, tweak or manipulate minor characters, so long as the truth of a story is still preserved. A filmmaker’s creative license should be to ensure that what is presented resonates more with viewers.
The game is different when it comes to works of fiction. In evaluating the exercise of a filmmaker’s creative freedom in works of fiction, one must begin by evaluating the intentions of the filmmaker. Bear in mind that the hallmark of every good work of fiction is the suspension of disbelief. Now, if the filmmaker intends (or intended) to mirror the reality of certain things or events in his fictional work, and some inclusions compromise the very suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewers, then to what extent is that fictional film — or work of art — true to the reality the maker intended to mirror?
If a fictional film is intended as a mimesis of a certain reality, and there are elements incongruent with the true state of things, then it is certainly an issue because the audience will be unable to immerse themselves in a narrative when they can see details glaringly not true to what the film is modelled after. The point here is about to what degree a film is able to achieve its end goal, which is the immersion of the viewers in the film, in believing the fiction which has been created. If a film is set in Nigeria, intended to reflect Nigeria’s institutional flaws, and an institution like the Police Force does not reflect the institutional rot of the Police Force (as we know), and Nigerians can identify these gaps, the question then is, who is the film made for? Those who have never been to Nigeria and have no familiarity with the Police institution.
In making fictional films, of course, the filmmaker is at liberty to run the course of his artistic freedom, but by how much does the film execute the intended or desired effect in the minds of the viewers? In the exercise of one’s creative license, how much of the believability in the film is the filmmaker willing to sacrifice?
Not every fictional work owes its audience the same degree of realism. Fantasy and science-fiction works, for instance, are judged more by internal consistency than fidelity to reality. However, a work that presents itself as a contemporary Nigerian drama derives much of its dramatic force from its resemblance to recognisable Nigerian institutions, social relations, and lived experiences. In such cases, departures from reality are more likely to attract scrutiny because the work invites audiences to measure it against the world it seeks to represent.
The 67-second teaser of Blood Sisters (season 2) features a scene set in a prison cell, where one of the inmates is extorting other prisoners over their daily rations. The prisoners are wearing a light-brown uniform with grey sweatshirts underneath and are milling around a common dining area. The overall depiction of the prison setting differs significantly from the conditions commonly associated with Nigerian correctional facilities.
The Nigerian correctional facility, as we know it, is an unbearably dehumanising place. Underdeveloped, it is a place of severe congestion, deteriorating facilities, decay and extreme grime. If anything, it is hell. Clearly, in a place notorious for its overpopulation and extreme conditions, it is quite unusual to see inmates wearing sweatshirts. For some viewers, the prison scene may appear difficult to reconcile with prevailing perceptions of Nigerian correctional facilities.
In an interview with Variety, Executive Producer Mo Abudu explained that one of the intentions behind Blood Sisters was to ensure that the series remained “as authentic and local as possible” in order to resonate with Nigerian audiences. In several parts of the conversation, she emphasized the fact that it is “a very Nigerian story.” On the other hand, in an interview, Biyi Bandele, one of the two main directors for the first season of Blood Sisters, responding to a question about the use of voicemail in Blood Sisters despite it not being a particularly common feature of everyday Nigerian communication, argued that the series was “not only narrating the Nigerian story” but also “creating stories.”
Going by both statements, Blood Sisters aims to be ‘Nigerian’ by telling “authentic Nigerian stories.” However, it still aspires for something beyond “Nigerian stories.” If Abudu’s emphasis on authenticity is taken as the primary standard by which the series is to be judged, then the prison sequence becomes difficult to reconcile with that stated ambition.
Yet Bandele’s comments seem to imply that Blood Sisters is not tethered exclusively to the realities of Nigeria and reserves for itself the freedom to invent and stylise aspects of its world. The question, therefore, is not whether Blood Sisters is entitled to exercise creative license, but whether the extent of that license in this instance weakens the credibility of the Nigerian world the series seeks to construct.
To be fair, it is important to acknowledge the fact that Nigerian filmmakers are peculiarly confronted with a brand of institutional reprisals and legal limitations at the hands of Nigerian institutions and certain groups. This problem has curtailed the extent to which filmmakers can go towards adequately reflecting fundamental flaws and the decayed underbelly of Nigerian institutions. The Nigerian Police Force (NPF), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and regulatory bodies like the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) have repeatedly issued strict warnings to filmmakers, skit makers, and content creators regarding how their institutions are portrayed.
They have banned the unauthorized use of their uniforms, branded jackets, logos, and operational insignias by filmmakers and content creators. Both institutions, and many more, warn that creators must stop portraying their officers as corrupt or incompetent, misrepresenting their standard operating procedures, and depicting their agencies in a bad light. The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has issued nearly identical warnings. Much like the police and the EFCC, the NCoS requires creators to seek formal institutional approval and script vetting before featuring any aspect of the correctional service in their films. As a result of these restraints, there is a limit to how far or how well Nigerian filmmakers and creators can go in trying to give a mimesis of the true picture of these Nigerian institutions and are forced to “invent” in order to sidestep this red tape. Seen from this perspective, departures from reality may not always be the result of artistic preference alone. They may also reflect the practical constraints imposed by regulatory institutions and the risks associated with depicting state agencies in an unfavourable light
Even groups like community associations and traditional institutions have thrown similar wrenches in the works. For instance, The Isale Eko Descendants Union (IDU), along with representatives from the Bajulaiye and Sasore chieftaincy families, sued the producers of Gangs of Lagos and Amazon. They filed a ₦10 billion lawsuit over the film’s depiction of the Isale Eko community as a criminal den and the deified Eyo masquerade as an assassination gang. Faced with these mounting institutional barriers, it is at times difficult for the Nigerian filmmaker to present a true reflection of Nigerian socio-cultural problems.
Every form of art is, at its core, an expression of the creator’s freedom. Without this freedom, filmmaking cannot evolve. Yet the closer a work positions itself to lived reality, the more questions it invites about authenticity and representation. The challenge for filmmakers is not simply choosing between invention and truth, but determining where the balance between the two ought to be struck on the basis of the intentions and motivations behind the film. Blood Sisters has reopened this question, and the debate surrounding its prison sequence demonstrates that there is no easy answer.
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