Some of the best African films of late seem interested in close-knit communities and forces of change that try to break them. In Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019), the destructive force is a capitalist government dam project. In Mami Wata, directed by CJ “Fiery” Obasi (Ojuju, Juju Stories), a village is brought into focus in a surreal sequence of black-and-white images. Mami Wata is about Iyi, an isolated West African village whose inhabitants adhere to old ways of living and are sustained by their worship of the water goddess, Mami Wata (or mammy water, in some parlances), even while surrounded by the encroaching modernity of nearby villages and towns.
Featuring alongside an international cast of actors, Nigeria’s Rita Edochie plays Mama Efe, a dignified regent and priestess—the “Asai”—who presides over the affairs of Iyi and doubles as Mami Wata’s medium. Mama Efe refuses any form of modernity into the village, insisting the power of Mami Wata is enough. She and her two daughters, Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and the adopted Prisca (played by Ivorian actress Evelyn Ily Juhen), are regarded by the villagers in a muted reverential way.
Conflict enters the idyllic village when the impetuous Zinwe steals her mother’s talisman in a tantrum. As a consequence, Mama Efe fails to cure a sick boy, as she is wont to do. Incredulity descends upon Iyi as certain sections of the village begin to doubt Mami Wata’s powers. Jabi (Kelechi Udegbe), a rebellious young man who is the main dissenting voice in Iyi, confronts Mama Efe in the scene immediately following the one above. The ensuing dialogue etches itself into your mind, thanks to the forceful power of the Pidgin spoken in the film.
The story projects power: the dynamics of the struggle for it and the corruption of the human character that it induces; the power of the spiritual over the physical, the influence of the old over the new. As Mama Efe tries to overcome the pall of doubt that hangs over Iyi—both Zinwe’s estrangement and Jabi’s militant defiance—and her sudden spiritual impotence, a young man is found unconscious on the beach. Mama Efe and Prisca nurse him to health. The man, Jasper ( Emeka Amakeze), is a runaway rebel. From this point, the film focuses on Prisca and Jasper’s budding relationship. His ersatz vulnerability attracts her. We see fine shots of walks on the beach, romantic dialogue—“If to say Iyi na my land, e fit be your land too,”—making love on the beach at night-time with the sea roaring close by
Contrary to his claims, Jasper turns out to be a usurper, joining forces with Jabi to take over the village, in a somewhat melodramatic turn of events that seems a bit hurried. As Jasper’s marauding horde takes over the village, there are echoes of the political events that have troubled Africa in the recent past. As Iyi falls into chaos and oppression, the villagers begin to realize their loss. Faced with a life-threatening choice, Prisca rises to the occasion to save her people. In a performance worthy of award podiums, Ily Juhen’s Prisca is an inspired representation of the sensual, sympathetic, and capable female leader, perhaps a microcosm of the deity herself. In adversity, she finds uncommon purpose and strength. We see the turning point quite literally: she turns around from her escape route and returns to Iyi, the transformation of a mild-tempered girl into a decisive woman.
The film has a poignant spiritual essence that is impossible to shake off from the first scene. From the intermittent appearance of the spirit of Iyi, who appears as a young ogbanje boy with long, cowrie-streaked dreadlocks, at crucial points in the movie, to Prisca’s dreams and visions, to the set designs—the clean close-up shots of the aesthetic details of the painted faces, the flamboyant hairstyles, the patterned costumes, the figurines and the Nsibidi figures on the walls of Mama Efe’s house—to the sound of the foreboding drums in the score, to the pithy dialogue heavy with meaning, the film has a kind of visual symmetry that only the best alchemy of scenery and skillful cinematography can achieve.
Speaking of scenery, Obasi apotheosizes the sea to great effect. As the sea waves roll and crash upon the white sands, a silent looming presence whose metonymic character clearly alludes to the absent deity, one sees a certain correspondence between its moods and events in Iyi (in Igbo, “Iyi” means “lake”or “water body”). Obasi’s use of this technique is reminiscent of the Senegalese movie, Atlantics (2019), in which the use of the sea symbolism is subtler, for while Mati Diop’s movie captures the sea as the sinister devourer of the dreams and souls of African immigrants through changes in color grading and the increased violence of the waves, the sea imagery in Obasi’s film is rooted in the transcendence of divinity. From when Prisca rescues Zinwe from drowning in the sea, a higher power seems to have taken charge.
It is partly in how Prisca manifests that Mami Wata—the movie and the deity—truly triumphs. In victory, it becomes clear that the power of Mami Wata has returned to Iyi and that the deity, through the affordance of time and opportunity, has chosen her intermediary. The celestial atmosphere of the film’s final scene has the sort of ethereality that can only be experienced properly in a darkly lit cinema: Mami Wata, the deity, stands in that victorious moment —a glorious apparition in the shimmering sea, dark and luminescent, so magnificent in her giant, goddess-like silhouette on the white shores of Iyi, a figure of ineffable beauty and grace.
Mami Wata does not press hard on its standout elements though. Obasi relies on visual implication. As one striking image segues into another, the viewer is mesmerized by the tease and glitter of the ever so present abundance of ebony and gray: farmers in a cornfield, young men and women drinking in a bamboo bar, Prisca’s motorcycle revving down a dusty road, a lone moon in dark sky, a deserted beach at night, faces of people who seem not to be of this world, an unrelentingly wistful ambiance, as if seen through a smokescreen—with these images, you might be forgiven for thinking you were in a dream.
Mami Wata speaks of places where existence is rooted in spiritual power; it speaks of how that spirituality may appeal more to a people’s atavistic inclinations than anything else. It is the underlying story of this primal struggle between ancient ways of living and the rude intrusions of modernity that gives this film part of its potency. More than anything, the retro aesthetics of Lilis Soares’ cinematography exerts this symbolism effectively. The feeling one comes away with after watching the film is akin to having peeked into the mystical world of African divinity; the feeling is lasting and inescapable. In a film industry that demonizes African deities, Mami Wata is a liberating triumph of beautiful cinema, a defining tour de force that will usher new beginnings.
Chimezie Chika is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. His works have appeared in or forthcoming from, amongst other places, The Shallow Tales Review, The Republic, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, Iskanchi, Efiko Magazine, and Afrocritik. He was a 2021 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency in Iseyin, Nigeria. He is the Fiction Editor of Ngiga Review and currently resides in Nigeria.