Western theology often extols the moral rectitude of the meek. But there’s probably nowhere in global cinema where that idea is more pervasive than in African and, specifically, Nigerian film. In Nollywood’s mainstream dramas, virtue is measured in painful endurance not action, and the pain is magnified in family dramas. The villain is kin and the betrayal brutal. Death is a common endpoint. And yet, the final absurdity remains: the long-suffering protagonist must forgive it all. To err is human, blood is thicker than water, and so on.
This unseemly formula has endured for decades. From When God Says Yes, released in the early aughts, to 2022’s Sista and even before. Its latest iteration comes in The Lost Days, the latest project from Steve Gukas’ First Features initiative, which is surprising since the enterprise promised innovation.
The Wingonia Ikpi-directed picture, the ninth film in the First Features series, is a family drama with weighty ambitions. It begins on a hopeful note: Chisom (Ifeoma Fafunwa), a middle-aged woman living abroad, learns her cancer is in remission, and then, reflecting on a life of professional success and personal sacrifice, returns to Nigeria, unannounced. She intends to reclaim her “lost days”.
On arrival, she seeks out Kolawole (Bimbo Manuel), an old flame. Their reunion isn’t welcome by all. Kola (Durotimi Adebule), Kolawole’s younger son, sees what his father won’t admit: Chisom hasn’t returned just for love; she’s come to overwrite the memory of his late mother. When calls to his elder brother, Moses (Baaj Adebule) fail, Kola lashes out. Things escalate quickly, culminating in Chisom’s kidnapping.
Wingonia Ikpi’s tense debut mixes horrid Nollywood sentimentality with fine craft.
Efiko Score: 5.5/10
Ikpi handles the escalation deftly, even as this is her debut picture. Suspense is handled with assured control, as she deploys slow motion and tracking shots to build dread. The abduction lands with the force of a gut punch.
The film’s cast members mostly hold up, except for Cynthia Clarke, who plays Nkem, Chisom’s daughter. Her performance is stilted. She isn’t helped by a turn in the script involving a romantic subplot between her character and Moses, even as this subplot is awkwardly introduced and suddenly dropped. But a prior revelation has already complicated the sequence, raising the spectre of an old Nollywood trope involving incest via childhood separation. This forbidden romance is never mentioned after its sudden drop. Why include it at all?
Still, the film’s true misstep lies elsewhere.
After a half-hearted red herring, the culprit is revealed and this leads directly to the film’s forgiveness theme. Which Ikpi seems to telegraph via symbols—on social media she has lamented the unwillingness or inability of critics to decode them. One of these visual symbols can perhaps be seen in a scene showing Kolawole behind prison bars in an echo of the predicament of one of his offsprings. This is perhaps a nod towards parental complicity in the film’s central crime. But the moral equation feels lopsided when all is revealed. The culprit is no saint even after accounting for external factors. The film shows their manipulativeness well before the crime is committed.
This means the logic of parental guilt leading to forgiveness fails. This isn’t redemption, it’s delusion. The reasoning behind Ikpi’s film stems from an old superstition: that blood matters more than upbringing. There’s more to say on this subject but commenting further risks entering spoiler territory. Let it be enough to say that while Nollywood has long glamorised forgiving male defaulters—fathers, lovers, patriarchs—The Lost Days offers a twist in the form of a more or less new male recipient of forgiveness.
This old-new forgiveness shouldn’t be encouraged, even if there is an argument to be made about how trauma breeds broken men. The Lost Days does not make that argument. Instead, it wraps harm in sentimentality and burdens women with the fallout. Chisom must pay for choosing education over motherhood. And even if she pays by being kidnapped, she must forgive. It is expected. It is demanded.
The Lost Days could have been a story of rediscovery, of mature love or honest regret. Instead, we get a lushly shot sermon on how women must suffer for seeking more than duty. They must pardon sins unworthy of even the devil. Of course, people forgive transgressors in real life. But that doesn’t mean cinema should always ask them to.
The Lost Days is streaming on Prime Video
