“On your marks.”
Three words C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi needed to accompany his announcement of The Boy Who Runs, his latest project based on the life of Ugandan Olympian Julius Achon. While the caption referenced the film’s subject, it also felt like a statement of intent. For a filmmaker already juggling multiple projects at various production stages, Obasi seemed to be saying that this is only the beginning.
Three years after Mami Wata premiered at Sundance, introducing his work to a wider global audience, Obasi is building one of the busiest slates for an active filmmaker in African cinema. The director, now represented by Sycamore Media, has assembled a pipeline that spans live action and animation, fiction and biography, while bringing together collaborators from across the continent and the diaspora.
Looking across the slate, however, Obasi sees less a collection of unrelated projects than the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. “When I was starting as a filmmaker, this is exactly where I hoped I would be,” he tells What Kept Me Up. “To be in a place and space where I’m able to work with several talented people and tell different stories across different genres and cultures is a dream… I feel incredibly privileged to have that luxury.”
Despite the variety of genres and formats, he believes they share a common creative thread. “They have a creative point of view that flows through my eyes, my tastes and my truth—even if they appear to be different stories and formats.”
One of Obasi’s newest projects was announced at the Cannes Film Market, where he was named the inaugural fellow of Seoul-based Flix Oven’s African-Korean Filmmaker Residency Programme, created in partnership with Continental Entertainment. Through the residency, he will spend a month in Seoul developing a feature described as a story bridging African and Korean cultures, with a theatrical release already planned. The project also has Hollywood backing, with Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary attached as executive producers through Revelations Entertainment.
Opportunities like these, Obasi says, are a direct consequence of Mami Wata. “I wouldn’t be able to have any of these projects kicking off, or even be in a room to discuss these projects if Mami Wata didn’t exist,” he says.
Yet he insists his creative process has remained largely unchanged. “I still take my time to work on the script, the characters, and do the research on ground—the same process,” he adds. “The only thing that changed is that there’s a lot more money involved now. So maybe the stakes are higher.”
Among the projects in this new lap is The Boy Who Runs, the biopic based on the extraordinary life of Ugandan Olympic runner, humanitarian and politician Julius Achon. Obasi will direct, co-write (alongside Kenyan writers Kirimi Kiage and Teddy Gitau) and produce the film, with Swiss-based production company 9 NIGHTS (The God of Odds) producing in association with Fiery Film. Based on John Brant’s book “The Boy Who Runs: The Odyssey of Julius Achon”, the film will trace Achon’s journey from being abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda to becoming an NCAA champion in the United States before returning home to transform his community.
The announcement follows months after Obasi was announced as director for another international production, A Blue Butterfly, a psychological drama starring Steve Toussaint, Sanaa Lathan and Lucian Msamati. Produced by UK’s Boudica Entertainment, production began in March, with the London leg wrapping up in April followed by additional filming in Rwanda (where Obasi and his producing partner Oge Obasi are based).
Already in the pipeline is La Pyramide, which Obasi (as writer and director) has described as “a diaspora, cross-continental, multicultural mystical voyage.” Starring Ugandan actor Ntare Guma Mbaho, the story unfolds across Brazil, Senegal and the United States with scenes set in Senegal and the US still on the call sheet. Still in production, the project was presented as a work-in-progress at the film market of the 2025 Red Sea Film Festival and is marked as a co-production between the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Brazil, Senegal and the United States (with Andrés Borda, Abbas Nokhasteh and Oge Obasi as producers).
More projects on Obasi’s official slate includes CHINUA, a fictional series about a university teacher whose ordinary life unravels after a mysterious encounter with a woman in a town with green starry skies and two purple moons.
On the animation front, he has animated series Juju Soccer (in development) selected for the 2026 Durban FilmMart Pitch and Finance Forum as one of the projects backed by Digital Lab Africa. The fantasy-genre football series follows a struggling neighbourhood team whose fortunes change after an apprentice dibia joins the squad, bringing supernatural powers to the game. The selection places the project before financiers and potential co-production partners at one of Africa’s leading film markets set to take place in South Africa in October.
CJ’s slate is also made up of projects in the treatment and script stage, including Nri, an epic fantasy feature at the treatment stage, as well as the feature films Intore: The Rise of an Afrikan Hero, They Came From the Valley and Mortuary Man, all currently at the script stage.
Which of those projects audiences see first, however, is something Obasi believes is often beyond a filmmaker’s control. “A Blue Butterfly and La Pyramide are frontrunners,” he reveals. “But the projects themselves kind of decide that for you. The best you can do is work, plan and execute. The chips of funding, time, festivals, sales and distribution will fall where they may.”
For Obasi, the focus remains constant regardless of which film crosses the finish line first. “My job is to make the best film possible within that time.”
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