Why few Nigerians have seen their country鈥檚 Oscar submission
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Shola Lawal Special correspondent
| Lagos, Nigeria
Painted faces, big smiles, and a frenzied air announce a marriage in a rural West African village. Women doll the bride up in white cloth embroidered in greens and reds, the traditional wear of the Fulani, a large nomadic group that鈥檚 spread across the region. Over the bride鈥檚 face, a pink veil falls demurely. As she makes her way to the wedding ground, a crowd surrounds her, dancing to the beat of hand-held drums while women ululate.
But the joyous celebration soon morphs into a slaughter as terrorists attack. Women fall from bullets and men are hacked. Over her mother鈥檚 corpse, a baby cries, looking into the camera as it pans away: Hers is one small story in a sea of tragedies. The bride and other women are carted away, and their life as slaves and fighters鈥� brides begins.
Nigeria鈥檚 new film 鈥淭he Milkmaid鈥� takes viewers on an intimate journey into lives they rarely see: people who are at the receiving end of a brutal Islamist insurgency that has gripped northeast Nigeria for over a decade, and spread to several countries in the Sahel region.
Why We Wrote This
Art expresses the things we care about most as individuals, but also as societies. So the debate about what art should be 鈥渁llowed鈥� is similarly telling: What topics are so urgent, so sensitive, that censors feel a need to clamp down?
Newspaper headlines announcing casualties have become so frequent that reactions have turned lukewarm. Outside the northeast, where Boko Haram seeks to carve out a caliphate, it鈥檚 easy to forget that behind those numbers are real lives. But 鈥淭he Milkmaid鈥� reminds, and it is a mind-clawing, well-shot reminder 鈥� for those who can see it, that is.
鈥淭he Milkmaid鈥� won the heart of Nigeria鈥檚 independent Oscars selection committee, and is the country鈥檚 official submission for the international film category this year. (Nigeria submitted its first-ever Academy Awards candidate last year, but the film was controversially disqualified for having too much English dialogue.)听But relatively few people have seen 鈥淭he Milkmaid鈥� in Nigeria, or even know it exists, thanks to government censorship.
Authorities said the movie is too provocative, according to director Desmond Ovbiagele, and accused it of misrepresenting Islam. He was forced to strip several scenes, including one that shows a terrorist as painfully ordinary, fighting sexual urges as he recites his prayers and reads the Quran. A scene where extremists plan to attack a school听鈥� mirroring real-life attacks by Boko Haram as听听as December听鈥� was also cut. In the end, Mr.听Ovbiagele shaved some 30 minutes from the film.
It wasn鈥檛 a first. Many film fans and creators, like Mr. Ovbiagele, complain that Nigerian鈥檚 film board imposes heavily moralized, arbitrary limits on art, threatening homegrown creativity. But Africa鈥檚 most populous country has long wrestled with tensions over religion, ethnicity, and social mores 鈥� particularly between its largely Muslim north and 海角大神 south 鈥� and censors sometimes cite the risk of violence.
Mr. Ovbiagele, a longtime banker who left finance for film about a decade ago, says he would rather not show the cut in Nigeria. He has turned to other African markets, like Zimbabwe and Cameroon.
鈥淲hat鈥檚 out there is not authentic. It鈥檚 not my vision; it鈥檚 the board鈥檚 vision,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 am saddened on behalf of ourselves and for the people whose lives we are trying to portray, because what [censors] want us to show does not represent their situation, and the whole point was to show them as human beings 鈥� both the perpetrators and especially the victims.鈥�听
Nollywood: Image-making machine?
Set in an unnamed part of West Africa, 鈥淭he Milkmaid鈥� follows fiery Aisha and her sister Zainab, whose cowherding life comes to an end when terrorists kidnap and force them into marriage. The sisters are separated, but Aisha continues to search for Zainab 鈥� only to find that she has fully joined the sect as a commander.
Terrorism is rarely examined in Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry known for producing more films than Hollywood. Nollywood has bloomed in the past decade, but favors slapstick comedies and glamorous movies that showcase the lives of Nigeria鈥檚 rich 鈥� big homes, big parties, flashy cars 鈥� over gritty, hard-hitting narratives that poke holes in that image.
The National Film and Video Censors Board is charged with classifying and regulating films. But critics accuse the government agency of employing a stricter approach to local films than to imported ones, and say nonconforming filmmakers must look elsewhere to launch.
鈥淚 know filmmakers who are working on the fringes of Nollywood and are making films that will never show in Nigeria,鈥� says Nigerian film critic Oris Aigbokhaevbolo. By favoring films that make Nigeria look good, the board operates as an 鈥渋ncredibly highhanded鈥� image-making organization, he adds.
Art about terrorism, which the government has struggled to contain, won鈥檛 fly. Neither do many projects attempting to push conversation around challenging social topics, from conflict and sexuality to poverty. For months, the film board delayed the release of the movie 鈥淗alf of a Yellow Sun鈥� about Nigeria鈥檚 Biafran War, which killed an estimated 2 million from the Igbo tribe. And in 2020 the makers of 鈥溍宖茅,鈥� a film about female lovers, were to premiere the film online, as homosexuality can bring a 14-year prison sentence.
鈥淭he way the Censors Board works is, 鈥榮ee no evil鈥� means there鈥檚 no evil: If no one can see it, that means it doesn鈥檛 exist,鈥� Mr.听Aigbokhaevbolo says. The consequence, he warns, is the stagnation of art and the 鈥渟hrinking of spaces for movies that will promote intellectual and cultural conversations.鈥�
A balancing act
The Censors Board did not respond to request for comment on 鈥淭he Milkmaid.鈥� In past cases, however, it has defended its decisions by citing the need to avoid a crisis in a deeply religious and divided country where art has incited violence.
In 2002, riots broke out after a lighthearted at some Muslims鈥� opposition to hosting the 2002 Miss World Pageant was taken as blasphemous. Two hundred people died. Sixteen people died in over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published thousands of miles away, in Denmark. More recently, Nigerians have against similar cartoons in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
鈥淎nything that can cause an uproar should not be ventured into because we know where we are as a society,鈥� Alonge Oyadiran, the board鈥檚 director of film censorship and classification, said in a 2020 with Nigerian filmmaker Niyi Akinmolayan. 鈥淲e have a culture, we have our norms, and there are certain values we have to follow. I wouldn鈥檛 say because I want my film to sell, I will make a film where people are kissing on the street. This doesn鈥檛 happen in Nigeria.鈥�
A middle ground has to be found, filmmakers and critics say, calling for the board to take a more collaborative approach. One thing Mr. Aigbokhaevbolo suggests is 鈥渁 sophisticated rating system that has [expanded] categories. What it would look like is the board saying this film can be shown, but this is what you are seeing鈥�: material that may be seen as blasphemous, for example. The seven classifications in use today are based on viewers鈥� age.
As for Mr. Ovbiagele, he hopes the board will rethink its decision on 鈥淭he Milkmaid.鈥�
鈥淩ight now, they [victims] are sort of detached from what we are experiencing as a country. We are going about our daily lives and they are just there sitting in some camp, doing nothing. It鈥檒l be a shame if Nigerians can鈥檛 see the film and be able to respond to it.鈥�
