Seven films have been selected to headline the 2024 iREP International Documentary Film Festival scheduled to hold March 21 to 24 at the Freedom Park, Lagos Island, and Alliance Francais, Mike Adenuga Center, Ikoyi, Lagos.
The films include Loot and the Lost Kingdom, Madu, The Fuji Documentary, Ki’Mon: The Eastern Nigeria Afro-Funk Revolution 1970-1980, Soot City, Excretapolitics and Jump Out. The films, both shorts and long features, are a part of the 45 films selected largely from Nigerian filmmakers and their counterparts from 25 continents set to screen at the festival.
In Loot and the Lost Kingdom, director Gbemi Shasore tracks Nigeria’s stolen artifacts, exposing the resulting loss of local knowledge systems, culture, spirituality and sciences to Africa, and begs the question whether restitution can restore Africa’s invaluable cultural legacy. In Madu, directors Matthew Ogens and Joel Benson, takes us along a 12-year-old’s journey who leaves his country (Nigeria) and family for the first time to study ballet at a prestigious dance school in England. Anthony Madu’s story is an extraordinary one of overcoming obstacles to attain one’s dreams and finding sense of belonging and acceptance away from home.
Saheed Aderinto’s The Fuji Documentary, tracks one of Yoruba music tradition Fuji, its history, founder (Sikiru Ayinde Barrister), its influences in contemporary music forms as Afrobeats, hip-hop, and gospel across south western Nigeria, Europe and the United States; while Ki’Mon: The Eastern Nigeria Afro-Funk Revolution 1970-1980, shows the healing power of music in reigniting cultural life and energy to a war-weary people.
Spotlighting the negative effects of soot in the city of Port Harcourt resulting from illegal mining, Adeolu Shogbola, interviews doctors, patients, environmental activists, petroleum industry experts, bunkering criminals and the city’s residents in Soot City, to present a holistic perspective of subject.
The last two films by South African directors explore issues of social injustice and the powers of creativity to overcome such. Yoel Meranda’s Excretapolitics – highlights Cape Town’s informal settlements where there are no flushing toilets because the government never built a sewage system, hence residents, daily, have to devise individual solutions to dispose of their excrement; while Nika Saravenja’s Jump Out, looks at an acrobatic group and its enabler Steve, whose ability to ‘think outside the box’ is helping hundreds of children like Ian and Promise, to dream big, and to know everything is possible, once they put their minds to it – money or no money.
The headlining movies will be screened at the two major sites of the festival and virtually. however, with the return of the festival’s Inner City Screening programmes introduced last year to bring documentary movies to the culturally underserved communities of Bariga, Ajegunle, Ikorodu and Ejigbo, other films from the selected 45 documentaries, will be screened at the four communities.
Themed Righting The Future, the 2024 iREP International Documentary Film Festival will spark conversation about the present and future of Africa, in light of the recent season of political anomalies and leadership failures experienced in many countries of the continent. It will further engender deeper dialogue between the younger people and their elders as part of charting a way for the future of Africa.
