Blessing Uzzi had a dream. She wanted to make her first feature film at age 25. But, as the saying goes, life is what happens when you’re making plans. Her first feature didn’t happen at 25. Instead, she did other things—things like going to university, earning a degree in Cyprus, and returning to Nigeria. The dream changed: What if she assisted someone to make their own first feature by age 25?
She shared the new dream on Twitter. Was anyone interested? She would choose someone based on their response, but the lucky person would need to have already made a short film.
“It was just a random tweet,” she says.
We are speaking at the Locarno Pro Talent Club in Switzerland, during the Locarno Film Festival, which, starting this year, has dedicated a section, Open Doors, to African cinema. Uzzi is one of its chosen producers.
One of the responses to Uzzi’s tweet came from a young man named Dika Ofoma. He wanted to know if he would qualify for her attentions with a “short film-ish”.
What does that mean, she asked.
He responded by sending her a link to a short film he made with a smartphone and 60,000 naira. It was clearly a super-low-budget fare. But he “had an eye”. She was impressed, sending it to her friends, one of whom she told that if Ofoma could make something quite good with 60,000 naira, maybe they should just give him 500,000 naira every month and get him to make short films set in eastern Nigeria.
Ofoma’s short film-ish “wasn’t perfect obviously, but I could see talent,” she says.
That tweet alongside its response would become the first step towards Uzzi and Ofoma appearing in Locarno for the Open Doors programme—but, of course, there was no way of knowing any of that. That was in the future.
In the meantime, the pair met in person in Lagos, at an apartment in Oniru. The conversation went well but just before they were to part, Ofoma told her he wanted to shoot a short film set in Southeast Nigeria. The title of the project was Kachifo and would tell the story of two lovers who can’t be together in ancient times. So, in desperation, they take a blood oath, pledging eternal love to each other. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say that the oath will come to have major consequences in present-day Nigeria, as the story grows to explore ideas connected to reincarnation and the politics of desire.
Suffice to say that Uzzi was hooked. Nonetheless, she suggested two amendments: It would be a feature film not a short and Ofoma would both write and direct the project as his first feature. Was she sure about these, Ofoma asked. She was certain.
It would take Ofoma about two years to come up with a first draft, which Uzzi read it in January this year. “The story is not done,” she says, “but it was so beautiful to read”.
As it happened, a few months before Uzzi read the script, Ofoma had attended the Surreal16 Film Festival in Lagos last year, and was present when Delphine Jeanneret, a member of the Locarno Open Doors team, had introduced the programme to the Nigerian festival’s audience. It was a great opportunity. The timing was right. He applied with Uzzi’s blessings.
Not long after, they received the good news. Kachifo was the sole Nigerian project to be invited to the projects section of Open Doors. Somehow, a random tweet from a couple years ago had led the Nigerian pair to a programme coveted by a generation of up-and-coming African filmmakers.
“It has been insightful,” Uzzi says about the Open Doors programme. “I have had incredible meetings…Dika’s future is really going to be big. He’s going to be massive.”
To make that massive future happen, Uzzi is putting things in place, and Locarno, she tells me, has been useful for that purpose. Could she share some of the more promising persons and/or institutions she has spoken to since she landed in Switzerland?
She laughs and says she doesn’t want it leaked because no papers have been signed. “But you can mention Steven Markovitz.”
Who else?
“Money people, people that want to do productions, sales agents, people that want to give minimum guarantees.” She refuses to elaborate but she is certain that “Kachifo is one of these stories that finding money from outside [Nigeria] is actually better because there’s a queer angle”.
If it works out as she hopes, it would be only the latest success in a recent timeline chockful of successes. Just last year, Uzzi’s production company’s first feature, Freedom Way, berthed at the Toronto International Film Festival. This year, she was named winner of the AMVCA film writing award for the same project. The film also won AMVCA’s Best Movie category. Which, of course, raises a question: What is the ideal venue for the Kachifo premiere when its ready?
That’s long in the future, she says, because she doesn’t rush projects, but she does supply a direct answer. “If I am to rank it, it’s Cannes, first, the Berlinale, and then Sundance.”
As though her charmed existence is scripted, just as she mentions those festivals, an Open Doors staffer comes to her table to say that someone from Sundance is about to speak to the cohort. And with that one of Africa’s promising film producers begins to head out. She has work to do.
