Nothing quite hits like a tale straight from the heart and after realising he needed to find his own authentic authorial voice, filmmaker Joshua Okwuosa set out to tell an evocative story central to the Nigerian experience and his own life with Okem. A story with origins that are hauntingly commonplace, Okwuosa maintains the verisimilitude of his storytelling by ratcheting up the tension as we focus on the helpless and desperate attempts made by Nigerian immigrant Okem to help his mother back home. Okem is a sharp reminder of the brutal realities faced by people all over the world who are forced to leave their homelands in the hope of providing for their families back home. Ahead of Okem’s premiere on the pages of DN today, we were able to talk to Okwuosa about the struggles he faced finding an Igbo speaking actor for the role, building the claustrophobia he wanted to reflect his protagonist’s desperation and scripting a real phone call between a kidnapper and their victim.
This is such a harrowing and intimate film, how did you come to be telling this story?
After not feeling satisfied with the completion of my first short film, which I deemed to be an artistic failure but now see as a necessary prerequisite to where I am today, I realised the main failure of the film was the story had no personal relation to me whatsoever. It was a film about two young farmers in the Midwest struggling to keep their farm and relationship, a topic I knew little about when I made the film and even less after making it. Ever since I decided I was going to be a filmmaker I knew the kind of stories I wanted to tell. As wide as my cinephile appetite is, from Renoir to Scorsese, Satyajit Ray to Hitchcock, I knew from watching these varied films that I could not tell these stories. I bear no spatial relation nor emotional connection to Scorsese’s Elizabeth Street or PTA’s San Fernando Valley. But I do know what the winding streets of Enugu look like and my experiences being raised in Nigeria with my siblings for half of my life.
The first draft of the script was 23 pages. It was simply an outpour of emotions accompanied by a desire to paint a portrait of a Nigerian immigrant’s life in America.
The key for me was to use what I learnt and am still learning from these great auteurs and apply them to Nigerian stories. The revelation for me as a young African filmmaker came chiefly from two men, Ousmane Sembene and Jean Rouch. Two idols who, amongst others, stand atop my cinematic altar. I bring up Sembene because after I watched/studied his first short film Borom Sarret multiple times I decided I would write a short film with minimal characters and shoot it in Abuja. Weeks later my father received news that a very close family friend of ours and business associate of his had been kidnapped on a visit to his village in Nigeria; four days later we found out he was dead. Amidst the grieving period, I realized that I had found my story. There was no need for me to travel to Nigeria to tell a Nigerian story, I could do it here.
Months later I scrapped my plans to travel to Nigeria and began to write Okem. The first draft of the script was 23 pages. It was simply an outpour of emotions accompanied by a desire to paint a portrait of a Nigerian immigrant’s life in America. Once I completed that draft I sought out a DP who would aid me in capturing this reality on film. I reached out to Kai Dickson after he was recommended to me by an actor I worked with previously. Through him I met my producer Liz Kraushaar and at their prompting I whittled the script down to 12 pages, making it tighter and more tense yet retaining the essence of the story.
Films and artistic mediums on the diaspora are so varied and necessary to open people’s eyes up to different stories. How do you think these stories shape you as a filmmaker?
They’ve shaped me incalculably. I say this because these kinds of films have the ability to bring about that adage “to live in someone else’s shoes”. There are so many films I’ve seen that are alien to my upbringing and culture yet emotionally tear me apart. Films such as Kes, La Promesse or Where is the Friend’s House by Kiarostami. These films and many others are emblematic of the power cinema has. The strength and visceral nature of the moving image.
What challenges did you find casting the right actors for the film regarding language and cultural differences?
Our lead actor Conphidance was nothing short of phenomenal and it was really by chance we got him. Finding Igbo speaking actors in Hollywood is rather hard especially if you’re a young director with ‘no name’ so to speak. There were various names tossed around for the role of Okem but once I saw a clip of Conphidance portraying a slave in the middle passage on a ship, lamenting his disposition in Igbo, I knew he was right for the role. Initially, I wanted to go the Neo-realist route and sought to cast a Nigerian mechanic I befriended a long time ago who fixed my car. This man was really Okem, the story was etched on his face. His family was in Nigeria and he was over here in this country working day and night to send some money back home to his people.
Finding Igbo speaking actors in Hollywood is rather hard especially if you’re a young director with ‘no name’ so to speak.
I told him about the project and that I would like to arrange a screen test and he let out a small chuckle. He told me that the story sounded great but that if I had a scene that required him to cry he might just begin to laugh. However, I continued to visit him and even set up a meeting between him and Conphidance so he could study him. I remember telling Conphidance to look at his hands, those blackened and bruised knuckles. The hands of man slaving away not only for himself but for those back home like Okem does when he is bent down scrubbing toilets. The nature of the story, its immediacy and how the cast, particularly Conphidance connected with the material precluded my desire for extensive rehearsals. We had countless Zoom calls and conversations concerning story, themes, use of Igbo, and so on.
How did you keep the authenticity of that harrowing moment Okem receives the phone call from the kidnappers?
The dialogue between Okem and the kidnapper is taken completely from a real call between a Nigerian kidnapper and a family member of the kidnapped victim! It was floating around WhatsApp and my father got a hold of it and sent it to me. The callous way in which the kidnapper refers to the woman he has kidnapped and barters for a price to release her as if she’s an item in a supermarket is absolutely chilling. I simply transcribed that entire conversation into the script taking very few artistic liberties.
An important part for me was deliberately omitting showing the characters in Nigeria on screen. There was some suggestion from outside sources to shoot scenes of Okem’s mother, Amadi, and even the kidnapper during the negotiation process. This to me would be completely antithetical to one of the key ideas behind the film, that weightless and vulnerable feeling you get once you receive a call that your family member has been kidnapped in a foreign place. When my father’s associate was kidnapped we didn’t see his face, nor the kidnapper’s. It was constant phone communication as we tried to ascertain details about his safety or updates regarding ransom money.
The dialogue between Okem and the kidnapper is taken completely from a real call between a Nigerian kidnapper and a family member of the kidnapped victim!
I wanted to put the audience entirely in Okem’s shoes, not knowing or seeing what is happening to your mother who is on the other side of the world. This is another important detail because if my family member was kidnapped in America I could easily alert the authorities, dial 911 and so forth. However, Okem’s mother is in Nigeria and he is in America, even if and this is highly unlikely but even if he were able to get in contact with the authorities in Nigeria he knows that he cannot trust them unless he pays them a fee given how corrupt the police system is back home. Throughout the film we see this angst consume him as he grasps at straws, going so far as to expose himself as an illegal immigrant at the bank as he tries to apply for a loan. In the end he goes to Nnadi, an Igbo man who works in his building but is on a higher scale of the socioeconomic ladder.
When looking for a DP what cinematic language and feel did you want them to be able to infuse into Okem to best tell the story?
Once I connected with my eventual DP Kai Dickson I began to send him notes with film references attached and ideas I wanted to incorporate into Okem. One of the main ideas was to utilize this Cinema Verite style that has its roots in Rouch but was beautifully hijacked and used by the Dardenne brothers. I screened La Promesse for Kai and emphasized how the movement of the camera, blocking, absent score, and disregard of dolly set-ups not only ensconces us in the film but it renders us voyeurs in this bleak depiction of immigration housing in Belgium. One of the things we kept emphasizing was this voyeuristic lens and style of filmmaking.
We shot on a Red Komodo with Zeiss Milvus Superspeed lenses. One thing I wanted to utilize was the 4:3 aspect ratio. I not only loved it for its aesthetic value but because it added to the claustrophobic nature of the film, highlighting Okem’s feelings. It is as if he is literally being squished between the frame. This is most beautifully on display in the bathroom sequence when he receives the dreaded call from the kidnapper. From the moment Okem picks up the phone till he is cowering on the floor pressed against the bathroom door, you can feel the claustrophobia. Jake Hull’s score and Spencer Poole’s sound design also aid greatly in enhancing this feeling along with Kai’s beautifully composed camera work.
How did you plan, film and edit the sequence of his frantic rush and desperate attempt to get the money?
In the early phases of the writing period there was no frantic rush to get the ransom. There was a scene of him counting his own funds but there was no bank scene or anything resembling it. The first drafts were more slowly paced and captured him wallowing in muck, so to speak, distraught at his disposition. It was not until I had a chat with a friend of mine who advised me to amp up his search and the desperation of it. Suggestions (such as Okem hurriedly pawing away his possessions) were made that I never took but the main idea of inserting a sequence of him looking for the money was established. One film I kept thinking of when re-writing this sequence funnily enough was Uncut Gems. The film is incredibly dissimilar to Okem but the way the story pushes Howard Ratner from place to place (or rather Howard pushing the story) with his indefatigable will and tireless determination seemed similar in my head. I wanted to capture this haggard and beaten face that is basically running around the entire film desperately in search of something.
One of the things we kept emphasizing was this voyeuristic lens and style of filmmaking.
Why was it important to the story that Okem goes to a fellow Nigerian to help him whose life and reality are clearly so different even though they share so much in common?
This is such a great question. Ideally one would think that Okem would go to Prof. Nnadi first, not only because he is an Igbo man like himself but because he knows him. However, one of the cultural traits that Igbo people exhibit (I myself am Igbo) is that for the most part we do not want to appear as if ‘we are without’, especially in the face of those who know us. I will give a short anecdote illustrating this.
On Christmas Day years back my grandmother had planned to bake and we had run out of sugar. I could not go to the store due to the fact that most were closed in observance of the holiday so I made a suggestion to my grandmother that I could drive to Aunty so and so’s house and ask to borrow her sugar. You should have seen the look on her face when I suggested this. It was as if I had just denied the holocaust or something to its equivalence. She sternly told me that she’d rather not bake than to look like she was begging. The fact that Okem goes to Nnadi as another Igbo man with his hand out, in his disposition, is big enough but there is a reason why it is the last thing he does. Culturally, he must exhaust every other option (like begging for a loan, potentially outing his immigration status) before he brings himself to ask Nnadi for the money. Nnadi himself understands this and knows instinctively that Okem would not have come to him unless he did not have it; he knew it was his last resort.
Now you have found your voice in regards to films, what is next for you?
I’m working on my first narrative feature. It is a film which is centered around the lives of three women in Nigeria. It is heavily based on my upbringing and childhood in Nigeria.
