Intentional Storytelling and Black Consciousness in Kunle Afolayan’s “The Figurine” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners”

Cinema has always been a medium for telling bold stories that explore collective identity and the dynamics of human relationships. With this medium, we are introduced to the multiple perspectives through which people see the world and how different cultures and societies function. Both Afolayan and Coogler, as filmmakers from different backgrounds and industries, harness the power of cinematic storytelling, in their respective ways, to portray Black consciousness, morality, identity, spirituality and shared ancestral and cultural values. These sentiments are mostly captured in the filmmakers’ respective chef d’oeuvres, The Figurine (2009) and Sinners (2025).

In the Hollywood film Sinners, Coogler tells a unique horror story that is not just about vampires but also presents an intersection between myth, tradition, music and racial tensions. Set in 1932 in Mississippi, a Southwestern state in the United States of America during the Jim Crow era, the film stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as identical criminal twins and WW1 veterans Smoke and Stack who return to their rural hometown after years of working for an organized crime group in Chicago. The twins acquire a sawmill which they convert to a juke joint that the local Black community can patronise. For the opening night, they invite their younger cousin Sammy and a couple of other acquaintances, creating an atmosphere of music, dance and celebration. But things turn sour for them when the venue is infiltrated by vampires, sinister forces that bring threat and chaos to what is supposed to be a seamless hangout for the Black community. 

Considered a turning point in the evolution of Nigerian cinema, Afolayan’s The Figurine presents the story of two friends Femi and Sola who discover and possess a mysterious figurine “Araromire” in an abandoned shrine that is believed to incur seven years of good fortune followed by seven years of misfortune. For the first seven years of having the object in custody, their lives improve dramatically. Afterwards, they encounter a series of tragedies that threaten to destroy their careers, relationships and legacies. Towards the ending of the film, there are conflicts over the efficacy of the prophecy, as we are left questioning whether the misfortunes are truly a result of the object, a matter of sheer coincidence or the consequences of the choices the characters made during their years of fortune.

Both The Figurine and Sinners have achieved critical success, reaching impressive milestones in their respective domestic industries and internationally, raising the bar of storytelling that resonates with African and Black cultures.  Upon release, The Figurine was the highest-grossing Nollywood film in the cinemas and also premiered internationally at Pan African Film & Arts Festival (PAFF) in Los Angeles and London African Film Festival. It received nominations across ten categories at the 2009 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), one of the continent’s  prestigious film shows, where it won five awards. In a similar vein,  Sinners had a global theatrical run, grossing over $368 million compared to an estimated $90–100 million production budget, becoming one of the most commercially successful films of the year. Ahead of the 98th Academy Awards set to hold this year, the film has bagged 16 nominations, which is unprecedented for a single film. 

Intentional storytelling are the purposeful creative choices that involve a smooth blend of  narrative, aesthetic style and themes in a manner that enhances meaning and overall appeal. It involves the filmmaker making reasonable stylistic decisions that impact the quality of the narrative and the audience relationship with his art. One may consider this in relation to both content and form, where content refers to the story idea, script and themes that make the foundation of the film and form is about cinematography, editing and colour choices, lighting and even other cinematic techniques particularly adopted by the director. Afolayan and Coogler demonstrate this great deal of intentionality, using a variety of strategies to challenge the conventional narrative patterns while dispensing themes that are relevant to discourses in the humanities. 

In Sinners, Coogler presents a nonlinear plot in which the majority of the story unfolds in a flashback, with music used as a recurring element, plot unifier and symbol. In what feels like a prologue, an unseen narrator reflects over the existence of legends of people from different cultures, including West African griots, gifted with the ability to make music that manipulates life and death. We meet a battered young man walking into a church where his father, the pastor, welcomes him and encourages him to forfeit a guitar that is believed to be bewitched. This scene simulates the theological belief of a lost, prodigal soul returning to the Abrahamic God in order to be saved and redeemed from eternal damnation.

Music in Coogler’s film is not merely a narrative element. It is an access point to different cultural memories and spiritual legacies. At the juke joint, where Sammy, with other performers, plays the guitar, he unknowingly invites vampires to the location. These vampires are metaphysical figures, wandering vicious souls of the dead trapped in human bodies, epitomes of evil and chaos. Through music, their world intersects with that of humans, blurring the lines between the physical and metaphysical. The conflict between the initially all-white vampires and the mostly Black attendants at the juke joint may be interpreted as a reflection of racial tensions and discriminatory policies against African Americans in that period.

On the other hand, Afolayan’s The Figurine navigates a folklore-based, suspenseful plot with symbols and an unpredictable resolution to reflect themes of unrequited love, envy, betrayal, romance and the conflict between free will and destiny, and the unpredictable, ephemeral nature of the human condition.  The film opens  in 1908 with the  tale of a certain goddess that brings seven years of prosperity to the community, followed by another seven-year period of anguish and destruction that the people are unable to bear. Aggrieved, the people take matters into their own hands, attempting to part with the goddess by destroying her effigy. This folkloric opening is filmed in black-and-white monochrome, which effectively establishes the initial setting as a past era. A shift towards contemporary Nigeria in the 21st century occurs where the film now follows two young men as they travel to a distant remote community for their service year where they discover the figurine. As an item of cultural significance, the figurine becomes a symbol of fate. Its presence in the film raises awareness over the relationship between human actions, divine intervention and consequences. The reappearing figurine is a symbol through which the filmmaker magnifies the tensions in the film, leaving the audience to raise questions over the morality of the characters and psychologically assess the veracity of the mysterious powers that the object is said to possess. 

While both The Figurine and Sinners are horror films, they come in different flavours of the genre. For The Figurine, the approach to storytelling is psychological as the filmmaker focuses on playing tricks, causing trauma and paranoia on and off screen. Suspense is treated with caution. Fear immerses the audience in the narrative, leading them to ruminate over the film’s moral threads and ambiguity. There is less attention to gore and bloodbath and the entire absence of monsters. Sinners, however, engages in supernatural horror, clearly conjuring vampires, monstrous figures beyond the natural world, that engage directly with humans. Coogler favours a more direct and confrontational approach, relying on violence and bloodshed as plot devices. 

In representing Black consciousness and morality, Coogler and Afolayan establish what identity and identity community mean to each of them. Sinners revolves around African American experiences, amplifying the traditions and twentieth-century existence of a marginalized community in the United States. Within this community are the morally questionable twin brothers known for their sordid criminal lives and gifted hands and voices like Sammy and Pearline. The film is set in the Jim Crow era where Black people  were considered the interior race and had access to facilities and infrastructure that were not on par with those of white Americans. In The Figurine, Afolayan turns to Nigerian culture and superstition, creating an atmosphere where traditional sentiments subtly clash with contemporary ideas. The characters, modern, polished and educated, do not believe in the curse of the stolen figurine until ugly circumstances cause them to have a rethink. And yet, through the duplicity of Femi, the film shows us how tradition and superstition is sometimes manipulated for selfish interests.

The beauty and success of any film cannot be detached from the strength of the narrative and authenticity of the creative’s style. In Sinners and The Figurine, a strong sense of purpose is evident, as it drives the artistic decisions of the filmmakers towards producing culturally rooted yet globally relevant narratives. Both films share common grounds in that they philosophically navigate  the concepts of fate, morality, redemption and the consequences of actions. Their cultural impact encompasses and connects  African and African-American audiences, elevating the global shared legacy of Black identity and values. In an era of culturally conscious cinema, both films remind the world of the ensuring power of Black storytelling and how important such sentiment is towards shaping the future.