Now Nollywood, Nigeria’s burgeoning film industry, has got in on the action, making the country’s Islamic extremist sect the subject of a new release, Boko Haram – the movie.
The
film follows the story of a young man who comes to Lagos with a secret mission
to detonate a bomb that will kill 2,500 people. But in an unlikely twist he
meets a prostitute who prompts a rethink. “It’s a film about a terrorist who
finds love and has to challenge everything he has been taught,” said Pascal
Amanfo, who wrote and directed the film. “We wanted to delve into the core of
this issue, challenging people’s ideals and beliefs.
The
film, released earlier this year in Nigeria and soon to be released in Ghana,
is not without controversy. Amanfo said he had to change the name from Boko
Haram to Nation Under Siege for the film’s domestic release, due to Nigerians’
heightened sensitivity on the topic. In Ghana, where the film is still titled
Boko Haram, critics said the poster – depicting the fair-skinned Ghanaian actor
Majid Michel wearing a turban and holding an AK47 – pandered to stereotypes
about terrorism in the region.
There
is rising demand for local movies across west Africa, where the growing middle
classes buy genuine and bootleg DVDs of films such as War in the Palace, God
Love Prostitutes and Fazebook Babes. By some estimates Nollywood is the second
biggest film industry in the world, releasing as many as 2,000 films a year and
continuing to expand. Last month the first NollywoodWeek Paris festival took
place in the French capital a week after Cannes, to increase Francophone
distribution opportunities.
Industry
insiders say there is a growing trend for films that take on controversial
topics in the news rather than traditional subjects like love, black magic and
family feuds.Last year’s Last Flight to Abuja touched on the subject of air
crashes, a delicate subject in Nigeria where shortly after the film’s release a
passenger plane crashed into a building in Lagos, killing 153 people. The
murder of four students at the University of Port Harcourt last year, killed by
a mob after they were accused of stealing, was quickly turned into another
Nollywood movie.
“It
is definitely a case of art imitating life,” said Zara Johns, “Nollywood
evangelist” at Iroko TV, an on-demand film streaming service for Nollywood
movies. “These things tend to resonate with Nigerians because they are really
happening,” she said.
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