“When Nigeria Happens”: Ema Edosio-Deelen Describes Film as Therapy

My first encounter with Ema Edosio-Deelen was in her directional debut, Kasala. It’s difficult recalling the year I saw the film, but what I can still recall, however, was feeling seen and represented in the film, as a young adult from Ajegunle. Her character and world building carries a resonance  with my immediate environment. Watching the film, you instinctively know Edosio-Deelen who directed, edited and produced the film, has a significant understanding of the average Nigerian’s experience. It doesn’t, at any point, feel like a voyeuristic and judgemental tour around the lives of these four teenagers, it felt like a journey. The second encounter was with Otiti, which I missed most of, when it screened at The S16 Film Festival in 2022. The few scenes of the film that I caught a glance of, reminded me of that documentary-esque feel and atmosphere residing in Edosio’s films. That same atmosphere and tone is also present in When Nigeria Happens, her most recent project that centers  the lives of six dancers trying to make sense of their lives. 

Edosio-Deelen’s films, through a conscious and subconscious decision, have always seamlessly communicated with each other. Edosio-Deelen belongs to the canon of auteur-driven filmmakers like Yorgos Lanthimos, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Bong Joon Ho, Ousmane Sembene, Tunde Kelani, and others, with whom a consistent idea, narrative, language, and style have trailed their works. That kinship can be found in the visual style of Edosio-Deelen’s films. To maintain and expose the rawness and naturalness of her characters and settings, there are minimal close-up shots in her films. As she mentions during our recent conversation, she isn’t scared of capturing and pointing the audience’s gaze to the supposedly dirty aspect of Lagos. The camera, which she handled in Kasala, Yemi Adeojo in Otiti, and Iuyah Alaha in When Nigeria Happens, brazenly captures the gutter, conductors, debilitating houses and structures, and bridges. These images and spaces act as willing companions in the world she has created for the audiences to see and experience. From an ideological lens, the director’s film finds a balance between art and politically-prone tone – a subtle kinship with Ryan Coogler, who does the same with Locks, Fruitvale Station, Wakanda, and other titles. With her films, akin to Kelani, Coogler, and Sembene’s spirits, the characters don’t set out to make political statements, nor is she, as an artist, consciously setting out to create politically-leaning characters. It’s the daily realities of the characters and how their society conspires to make life hell for them. This framing is dominant in When Nigeria Happens. In one of the scenes where Fagbo, the film’s lead and the dance group leader, has to care for her ailing mother, we are rudely introduced to an uncompleted building serving as a community “hospital.”  For anyone who has had the displeasure of visiting a Nigerian public hospital, this uncompleted structure is metaphorical of the state of Nigeria’s health care system. will feel strongly about the ruin domiciled in Nigerian hospitals. 

Growing up in Ojo shaped Edosio-Deelen’s filmmaking. Walking barefoot on the street, pushing tyres around the street with other kids, living life as one of the six girls in a family of seven children and experiencing the communal bliss of growing up in a closely-knit community are elements that Edosio remarks shaped her filmmaking practice. As a video journalist for Vice News and the BBC, she was introduced to documentary filmmaking, which has also inspired her lifelong interest in capturing and showing the daily realities of Nigerians. Also, directors like Asghar Farhadi, Darren Aronofsky, and Paul Thomas Anderson, whom she appreciates for their open-endedness, have influenced her filmmaking taste. Additionally, the urgency of replicating what she has seen, heard, and felt also guides her writing, directing, and casting. These disparate experiences and influences, which have guided her films, also make her believe that Nollywood can be a safe space for different stories. “Growing up in Ojo was life for me. And I want to show environments similar to that. Not that there aren’t problems there, but there are also very strong, resilient, amazing characters there, too. The working class community isn’t just a den of gangsters, stupid gate men, and unambitious people.”

Three feature films after, Edosio-Deelen still believes she’s still finding her voice. And, at this point in her artistry, stories around the average Nigerian are what she’s drawn towards. She just wants people to see what she sees through her films. She mentions having a great but shielded childhood. It wasn’t until university that her fascination with art started blooming. This offered her a fresh view on life. She wants to redirect our gaze to the conductors with a million stories, to the overcrowded room that carries numerous dreams and ambitions, to the father, mother, and children fighting against all odds to remain ambitious. The social and political commentary that creeps into her films is a result of a well-written script and direction that subtly frames the society, Nigeria in this situation, as the biggest enemy of the characters. “For me, film is an expensive therapy. And, filmmaking is my medium of expression and continually showing that excitement.” 

Detailing documentary filmmaking influences on her work, she mentions how she directed her actors to occupy spaces and move naturally in the world she has created. For When Nigeria Happens, Nigeria was the antagonist. This understanding made her ensure that, rather than using intimate shots, she went for long shots that capture, in an observational manner, the world of the dancers. Their world is a beautiful, shiny, and glossy one. Their clothes aren’t necessarily ironed, wrinkled, clean, or dirty. Their clothes look worn by normal individuals living their daily lives. And their parents look alive. As a director, she enjoys working with bendable and morphable actors. Actors who can appear empty only to be filled with the nuances, idiosyncrasies, and all of a character they’re working on. “African films are too beautiful and glossy which I find unnatural. As a filmmaker, I don’t shy away from the gutters, colours, and rawness of places. And I think my ability to follow and capture these [animate and inanimate] characters is heavily influenced by my documentary background.”

Edosio first met Qudus Onikeku in 2016 through one of his performances. She remembers being captivated by his use of body movement as a communication tool. Thus, when scripting for the film started, she reached out to him and discussed the idea of making a film with his QDance Company’s students. Onikeku agreed, and the audition process started for these dancers who had no acting experience.  Working with Onikeku is a seamless process. As the film director, she is deeply aware of the emotional requirements of each scene and moment. But, since she doesn’t have the language to communicate with the dancers, Onikeku helped with that as the film’s movement director. Before shooting, the dancers interpreted the script and rehearsed movement and dance sequences that conveyed specific emotions like anger, pain, frustration, and sadness that Nigeria deposited on the characters. 

Nigeria’s indie filmmakers still struggle with funding to produce their films. Reliance is placed on grants, labs, and private investment. With no industry-structured funding opportunities, filmmakers like Edosio, who have made critically acclaimed films, still struggle to make their next films. But she’s tired of waiting and expecting a miracle to happen. She has and is encouraging other independent filmmakers to take destiny into their hands. Edosio believes that mainstream Nollywood and its filmmakers have successfully marketed the industry and their films profitably. This is something that’s lacking within the Nigerian independent filmmakers’ community.  “We make great films, but we haven’t proven the viability of our work.”

 As the world moves towards what Edosio describes as a creators’ economy, where independent filmmakers, after making wonderful films, can build loyal communities and ecosystems around their films and career. Edosio got better acquainted with this idea after Kasala’s successful circuit run. Reading about the idea, she learnt that as a Nigerian filmmaker who is deeply aware that their films aren’t for everybody, there’s no stopping her from directly targeting Nigerians and cinephiles in the diaspora, dotting on African films, whom she can share her works through a structured mailing list.

After making self-funded films over the years, she is at a point where she views her films as Minimum Viable Products (MVP), allowing her to build a large body of work and make commercial cases for her films with investors. “I think each indie filmmaker needs to build their ecosystem. It’s akin to the Tyler Perry method of building a mailing list of over 1 million people who are looking for your work. I think Nigerian indie filmmakers need to move past the stage of saying they have made great films, to now building a distribution and audience ecosystem.”

Right now, the filmmaker is building her ecosystem and community. As she mentions, she has created merchandise, books, and other art products that she will be launching soon for sale on her website. This slow and steady building process is important for her now, as in the long run it will provide presentable spreadsheets to investors who might fund her next projects. This finding-the-audience initiative also means that she doesn’t have to wait for years, hoping to get sales agents and distribution deals. “I am taking the bull by its horns to create a community for myself and market my films. With When Nigeria Happens, I am actively working on building an ecosystem and community that can afford me the confidence to reach out to investors and make a seamless pitch. Also, I am building an audience and showing them numbers that can have us have a conversation around funding.”

There is no official release date yet for When Nigeria Happens, but the director has been doing multiple screenings. There have been positive and encouraging responses so far. But what’s significant is that in years to come, Edosio-Deelen will be remembered as one of the directors who tells the human and working class story with the compassion and understanding of someone who has a personal stake in portraying the human story of a sect or people that for generations are seen as a burden and unambitious.