AFRIFF: In Freedom Way, we are presented with a lesson in the ripple effect of bad governance. The ways policies affect all levels of society are on display: the poor who long for the most basic needs, the middle class who want some self-actualization in creating something and the politically corrupt class who never stop taking.
We follow Themba (Jesse Suntele) and Tayo (Ogranya Jable Osai), two tech founders trying to launch a rideshare app for motorcycles—reminiscent of Gokada—and how corrupt and unfavorable government policies ripples through the city of Lagos and affects the lives of other people. The story, directed by debutant Afolabi Olalekan, is lean, focused solely on the many characters it has to handle. Adebowale ‘Mr Macaroni’ Adedayo is the loving Abiola who is transformed by the police garb; Femi Jacobs is Officer Ajayi, a role he plays with a drunken combination of menace and humor; Taye Arimoro is Doctor Cheta whose adherence to rules costs him gravely and Mike Afolarin is Edi, a sort of placeholder for every Nigerian youth`s dream.
You start Freedom Way with a deep sympathy for Abiola and his family. A struggling motorcycle rider, he hustles solely for his daughter’s (Tiwalola Adebola-Walter) future. As the story moves, this sympathy transforms into a kind of fear and malice—fear for his life and malice for the path he chooses. He undergoes the most characterization in this film, which is deftly handled by Adedayo whose face contorts through dismay, fear, confusion and hopelessness throughout the film.
Freedom Way serves some of Nigeria’s most contemporary issues with a measured lens in a way many films of this reactive genre have failed to do. These films often try to analyze systemic problems and offer solutions in the same breath, which allows for clumsy portrayals and characters that just spit out policy points. In the Blessing Uzzi-written feature, these systemic issues are just laid bare with emphasis on the deep human impact—even though sometimes the connections between characters occur almost too conveniently. Despite this, the film excels by showing rather than preaching. When the ban on motorcycle riders is enacted, the film immediately gives it mass with aerial shots of the okada riders protesting and being chased by the police. Everyone knows about this ban but seeing it in this human light gives it a new effect.
With direction that is steady and drone shots that are measured in their innovation—the closing shot comes to mind, Freedom Way looks at the way our humanities are eroded by government-made circumstances. Abiola is both oppressed and oppressor, Tayo is cold to a fatal shooting in a way that Themba doesn’t understand because he’s not Nigerian, and Edi runs into a fire to save his passport before his mother.
In the end, you come out of Freedom Way with different levels of sympathy for the characters and a lesson that in Nigeria, one of the surest things is that e go touch everybody.
Freedom Way screened at the 2024 Africa International Film Festival.
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Side Musings
- During the film, a police officer says that the exchange rate is 600 naira to 1 dollar and I just shook my head. If only he knew what was waiting for him in 2024.
- They need to release the soundtrack album soon, please. It was so good.
- Themba will go back to South Africa and never come back after the shege he has seen in Nigeria.
