S16 Film Festival 2025 : Rete Poki’s “Traces of The Sun” Reflects on Love as Resistance 

Rete Poki is a regular name at the S16 Film Festival’s programming. In 2023, the filmmaker and photographer made his debut appearance at the festival with Lorem Ipsum which he co-directed with Sasha Agbontaen. In 2024, their film, Everything Lasts and Nothing End also screened at the festival. And, at the recently concluded 2025 edition of the festival, Poki made his debut solo appearance with Traces of the Sun as part of the official short film submission. Outside S16 Film Festival, Poki’s films have been selected for and screened at Mostra de Cinemas Africanos, SoleDXB, Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival, and the Ibadan Indie Film Festival (IFA.)

Lorem Ipsum revolves around desire, spirituality and the need to find answers about the self and the responsibilities to it. Everything Lasts and Nothing End which has Uzoamaka Power and Funmbi Toye plays around the story of two people that spontaneously meet and quickly fall in love with Lagos and each other. The film explores yearning and desire while also mediating around religion and spirituality – a constant presence in the duo’s films. Traces of the Sun also confront the question of identity from a definition of what love and relationships are. The film asks these questions : what does it mean to be loved in Nigeria and what does it mean to love Nigeria? Staged against the backdrop of generational systemic misogynoir, the part documentary and photo essay film, features a diverse group of women and non-binary people about their definition of love and relationship with love.

The subjects’ vulnerable conversations allow for an understanding of love outside the confines of romantic relationships. And each subject offers their varied understandings and interpretations of love, friendship and commitment to self and others. The film takes the liberty to rebel against the conventional documentary interview-esque style. Poki doesn’t match a subject’s voice to their face. We just see the subjects living their daily lives : taking pictures, painting, going on picnics, taking rides and living. And as the film progresses, their different voices guide us into the film and form a quasi narrative. 

As the subjects’ speak and reflect on the questions the director must have asked, it becomes possible to reflect on how the family, as a microcosm of the state, shape and dictate how children view and perceive love and sacrifice. The conversations amongst the subjects show how parental validation has a profound impact on the mental health, self-esteem, and identity formation of young people. In a capitalist-driven world and culture where Nigerian and African parents view unorthodox career pathways as an invitation to poverty, parental support for the “risky” path of artistic or creative career is a significant act of love and validation. This kind of love and acceptance foster respect and autonomy. 

In another moment, we hear voices recount abusive and traumatic moments with their parents and family relations. This shows how negative familial experience can become a blueprint from which individuals construct their expectations and boundaries for future relationships. Despite the strong pull of this traumatic past, we can hear the film’s subjects pushing back against these negative experiences and striving to define love, friendship and commitment. In their individual responses, the film’s subjects recount experiences with family, friends and romantic partners and how it has come to define their expectations for healthy interpersonal relationships. 

Poki’s intimately framed film gives care and attention to marginalized Nigerians and invariably shifts the power dynamic from external observers to the subjects, allowing them to define love and their reality on their own terms, rather than being defined by societal prejudices. The film also touches on how violence and violent acts creep into relationships. What’s beautifully striking here is that the director decides against populating the film with violent images of a woman or child being physically abused. Rather, the film uses a yam-pounding scene to metaphorically capture how,  under the guise of “love”, women and children are beaten into mouldable shapes and forms by violent partners.

From a cinematic and storytelling perspective, the director’s visual choice and metaphor is a sophisticated technique to convey a difficult subject without resorting to explicit, graphic violence. This is a common Nollywood trope that has often been criticized as “trauma porn. The auteur-driven and stylistic choice attests to Poki’s unique voice and sensitivity to the subject matter. It’s a deliberate artistic decision to prioritize emotional resonance over shock value.

From a socio-cultural lens, yam-pounding and pounded yam is a traditional Nigerian culinary activity and food. It’s a communal, rhythmic, and even celebratory domestic act in many Nigerian and West African cultures. Although the film doesn’t specifically draw this cultural reference, the director takes the symbolic domesticity of yam-pounding activity and subverts its meaning to reflect on the hidden violence within Nigerian and African homes. The intended meaning being that domestic violence (or intimate partner violence) is hidden in plain sight within accepted cultural norms and household routines.

The film’s metaphorical interpretation of the yam-pounding activity frames how individuals, mostly women, and their agency, humanity and dream are broken as an act of “love,” “discipline,” or “character building.” This imagery also serves as a critique of Nollywood filmmakers’ portraying sexual and domestic violence in Nollywood productions. In recent times, there have been essays and reviews of Nollywood titles that criticize Nollywood for its frequent, graphic depictions of explicit sexual and gendered violence for exhibition sake. This film’s choice to use the subtle, metaphorical image of yam-pounding is a sophisticated, subversive counter-narrative to this dominant style.

Traces of the Sun features a diverse group of women and non-binary people discussing their personal lives. In Nigeria where the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) criminalizes same-sex relationships and potentially targets non-normative gender expression, the act of publicly documenting and sharing the personal love lives of women and non-binary people is an act of political defiance and demand for recognition. The film also challenges the heteronormative ideal of relationships prevalent in Nigerian culture and media. It offers a broader definition of love and relationship beyond heterosexual and romantic ones. 

The film also touches on love as resistance and a way of breaking generational trauma and pain. It sees love as friendship and community, love as sacrifice of self and love as care and attention to choosing oneself.