TAFM

Written by Francisca Eleyele and directed by ‘Chukwu Martin, Abe Ni is about one of the most dehumanizing cultural practices still rampant today: female genital mutilation. It refers to the cultural practice of removing whether in part or in whole, the external female genital organ for non-therapeutic reasons. It is a form of violence and infringement on the rights of women as it deprives them of sexual satisfaction and freedom. Over 200 million girls and women alive today have experienced genital mutilation, and as of 2021, an estimated 4.2 million girls were at risk of being cut.  In Sudan, 96.6%…

In the first scene of the 1596 play, The Merchant of Venice, one of the main characters, Antonio, likens the world to a stage:  I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;A stage where every man must play a part,And mine a sad one. — Act I, Scene I A few years later, when Shakespeare’s theatre, The Globe, opened in 1599, its motto, placed above the building, was the Latin phrase, Totus mundus agit histrionem, or, ‘all the world plays the actor’. This aphorism still holds true today, perhaps more than it did four hundred years ago.  In this age…

There is something visually and mentally appealing about Atoka’s opening scene. The scene is set and shot on a mountaintop, far from the bedlam of modernity. This scene later evolves into a poetic sequence that introduces the film’s major cast and their distinct identities: Adufe (Seyitan Adeyemi) is the mild-mannered Nigerian youth passionate about education, Dapo (Damilare Aguda) is the Mathematics teacher with a noticeable apathy for teaching while  the film’s lead character, Goke (Oluwatobi Fakos), is a struggling student with a preference for Yoruba language. One of the other striking aspects of the opening scene is the deeply metaphorical…

The second day of The Annual Film Mischief 2023 expands on the social consciousness of Day 1. Shooting the culture can also be described as stoking the embers of topics we like to run away from or think of as controversial. The place and significance of the female gender in the Nigerian society continues to be a consistent preoccupation, so is the ever widening economic disparity that sees the poor plunged further into poverty. Nwamaka Chikezia’s My mama na Ashawo, screening virtually, addresses the duplicitous treatment accorded to sex work in Nigeria. A young boy called Tejiri is excited to…

The idea of a festival dispatch is to summarize the proceedings of a day from the vantage point of a unifying theme. The search for a theme that makes sense of everything can be fun, but there’s always the danger of shoehorning varied expressions into a preformed perception. The Annual Film Mischief 2023 (TAFM’23) is a celebration of young filmmakers from all over the continent. And it’s not just the celebration of any kind of young filmmaker; it’s a platform to celebrate those with the guts to challenge the status quo. This year’s theme is Shoot the Culture. Shooting the…

It was a celebration of eclectic films at the just concluded 2nd edition of TAFM’23. The four-day festival, held physically across Accra, Abuja and Lagos, came to a close on Sunday, April 30th 2023 with Awaiting Trial – a documentary by Chude Jideonwo. The festival involved physical screenings, a virtual day for virtual film screenings, Q&A’s with filmmakers, and a groundbreaking FilmTech Conference (which included a VR experience). Outstanding filmmakers were acknowledged for their work during the award ceremony. Several presenters, including filmmakers Tolu Ajayi and Oge Obasi, were called upon to do the honours with Chief Juror, Nwakaego Boyo,…

Nwakego Boyo Producer, Actress Nigeria Chief Juror Nwakaego Boyo (professionally known as "Ego Boyo") is an internationally renowned and accomplished award winning actor, producer & entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Temple Productions and Temple Media. She has over 30 years of experience and expertise in consulting, producing, and financing premium award-winning films and media content. As an actress, Ego Boyo became a household name in 1991 when she made her professional acting debut in the critically acclaimed Soap opera "Checkmate'" on the Nigeria Television Authority. Temple has produced award-winning feature films such as "The Ghost And…

April 3rd, 2023 Press Release  On 27 April 2023, The Annual Film Mischief (TAFM) will return for its second Pan African edition. This year, our theme is #ShootTheCulture. This theme is a call to action for us to tell stories that reflect and celebrate our uniqueness in an innovative and global way. It also refers to unlearning the things we have come to accept as norms, as well as attitudes that often limit us as creatives. Disruption is now the new normal and in order for us to remain competitive in the Global M&E conversation, we must forge our own…