What does it mean to be Nigerian today? Is there a Nigerian dream and is it attainable legitimately?
Who are the heroes that kids can look up to? Or is the country just a vast minefield populated only by badly behaved youth, internet fraudsters, money launderers and thieving politicians?
La Femme Anjola, the long awaited neo-noir crime thriller by award-winning director Mildred Okwo (The Meeting, Surulere) considers these questions.
The film’s title translates to The Woman Anjola in English. The screenplay for La Femme Anjola, written by Tunde Babalola imagines a shady underground world populated by abusive husbands, players and lovers and cheaters and hustlers. Okwo directs a talented team that brings this world to vivid, colourful life.
Multiple award-winning actress, Rita Dominic leads the excellent cast of seasoned and upcoming professionals. Dominic plays Anjola Kalu, the wife of Night club owner Odera Kalu (Chris Iheuwa) who falls for a young Stock Broker and part-time sax player, Dejare Johnson (Nonso Bassey) and turns his world upside down.
La Femme Anjola fully embraces “the world is a dangerous place” theme of the 40s film noir genre but it is steeped in the Nigerian situation that inspires it. The film is peopled with characters that will do anything to survive, by any means necessary.
There are no pure heroes not in the way Nollywood usually writes them, neither are there chances of complete villains. Everyone is simply trying to get ahead of the other in a society where the winner seems to always take it all. With the film, Okwo continues her interrogation of all aspects of the Nigerian life, a curiosity that she took to new heights with the sharp political and social observations in her 2012 film, The Meeting.
Aesthetically, La Femme Anjola is likely to be a game-changer as the production design is top-notch with Okwo, her cinematographer Jonathan Kovel, production designer Kelechi Odu and Costumier Yolanda Okereke digging deep to create Hollywood’s famed film noir aesthetic updated to reflect present Nigeria.
“Every single department had to work hard to earn their keep on this set. It’s an ambitious script and we executed it with very limited funds compared to Hollywood or Chinese filmmakers” states Okwo.
Despite this statement, La Femme Anjola’s final figures are much more than the regular Nollywood budget thanks to a mixed bag of debt and equity financing from Lagos based GTI Securities and other Angel investors.
“Consider that in a space of six months we have built major sets, shot in various locations in Lagos, Cape Town and Johannesburg caused several explosions, you will realize that we have outdone ourselves to finish this film. We went all out to give our audience a kind of thrill not so common in our industry, I hope they enjoy it”, Okwo concludes.
In the same way that the film noir sub-genre reflected the American situation in the ‘40s and ‘50s, a period marked by pessimism and disillusionment following the great depression era, La Femme Anjola arrives at a similar time in Nigeria.
With an undignified label as the world’s capital of extreme poverty, a North-East region under threat and an economic recession, the last half-decade has been hard for Nigerians. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? La Femme Anjola is therefore timely as it explores the Nigerian psyche this period with storytelling exuberance and detailed production values.
La Femme Anjola hits the theatres in 2020.
ANTHONIA OBOKOH
