AFRIFF: There are many stories told of victories and the ways they are achieved. The tales of the final battles and surrender, chronicles of the victors and vanquished, narratives strung together of the pacts forged while people fell to their deaths. But what comes after? Especially wars that split nations and stifle independence. To Adaego with Love takes the reconciliation effort of the post-Nigerian civil war period and places it within and outside a love story between a school teacher and an army officer.
Directed by Nwamaka Chikezie (My Mama Na Ashewo) and written by Brenda Ogbukaa-Garuba (Love and Life), To Adaego with Love is a story that moves between postwar reconciliation and romance with a somewhat uneven hand. The reconciliation, which forms the film’s foundation, is steeped in an idealistic viewpoint: the soldiers are almost perfect and supportive of one Nigeria; this is difficult to reconcile with the waves of repercussions that still reverberate in eastern Nigeria. It romanticises a past that didn’t succeed, in a present that faces those consequences.
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Moving on to the romance built on it, we get a much more interesting push-and-pull, a required tension for the prevailing power of love that exists in the romance between the Igbo school teacher and the soldier. It’s a dynamic that’s immediately forbidden, and its fragility is sold effectively by Adam Garba (Hijack 93) as Major Bala whose stoicism is dissolved by Adaego’s affection. But it still demands more than it gives, it’s set just immediately after the war, but Adaego (played by Chisom Agoawuike) feels unaffected by the war at all, only reminded of its horrors after her grandmother (played by Onyeka Onwenu in one of her last film roles), tells her a story about her son’s (Adaego’s uncle) death at the hands of soldiers—this political avoidance continues in the refusal to show which soldiers did the killing.
In capturing the reconciliatory process, it tells of a justified distrust and hate that Igbo people have for the Nigerian military, but it’s not fully formed in the film’s narrative. Bob-Manuel Udokwu’s towering presence as Adaego’s father represents the pride of a people in moments where he rejects the attempts at reconciliation, but it’s soon set aside for a third act focused on a drawn-out love story letter exchange.
With key moments punctuated with music, Chikezie directs tight frames of dialogue in beautiful locations as the film strips away most of its reconciliatory elements to focus on a love story that needs those legs to stand. Sometimes the film yanks at you, reminding you of the real evils of the Nigerian army, but it never fully wades into those murky waters. With such an idealistic view of a messy, unresolved violence, To Adaego With Love inadvertently tells us that to seek genuine reconciliation, it must first begin with justice.
To Adaego With Love screened at the 14th Africa International Film Festival. It won the Best Screenwriting and Best Feature Film Awards at the festival.
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Side Musings
- Adam Garba is doing some great work for military sympathy with how hot he is in this film.
- Major Bala and his friends should have gone on a nationwide tour with their band, that would bring peace to the land.
- We need to bring back letter exchanges, end the DM culture and declare love via handwritten messages.
