BFI: Idris Elba’s directorial effort Dust to Dreams, produced by Mo Abudu for EbonyLife Films, arrives with a premise brimming with potential. In execution, however, the acclaimed actor’s 20-minute short film amounts to little more than a half-baked sketch, a series of vignettes that gesture towards profundity but never quite arrive at it.
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In the film’s opening frames, the stage is set for a poignant meditation on familial discord, mortality, and the weight of inheritance. Millicent, portrayed by the usually reliable Nse Ikpe Etim, clutches at the remnants of her father’s legacy, a nightclub that serves as both sanctuary and albatross. Her sisters, Comfort (Eku Edewor) and Patience (Atlanta Bridget Johnson), circle like vultures, looking to sell the club.
Millicent is also unwell but refuses to seek treatment, much to the displeasure of her daughter Bisola (Constance Olatunde). Her old flame, Johnson (Seal), fondly called the Singing Soldier, saunters in unexpectedly after an absence that spanned decades.
A terminal illness looms. An estranged lover resurfaces. A daughter yearns for connection. On paper, these ingredients promise the kind of intimate emotional drama that lingers long after the credits roll.
The film’s ambitions are laudable: it seeks to capture the tenderness of fleeting moments, the weight of familial bonds, and the redemptive power of music in a Lagos setting that pulses with vivacity. Yet, Dust to Dreams feels like a song that starts with a captivating riff, only to fumble its hook and melodies.
We’re told that Millicent’s father, Papa Kayode, left this nightclub behind, that it matters deeply to these three sisters because it’s the sole remnant of their father’s memory. Yet we learn nothing of Papa Kayode beyond these perfunctory declarations. What kind of man was he? What songs did he love? What makes his nightclub worth fighting over beyond mere property value?
Eku Edewor’s Comfort, meant to be a fiery antagonist, is undermined by patchy line delivery that swings between wooden and overwrought, sapping the character’s menace. Atlanta Bridget Johnson’s Patience, ostensibly positioned as the calm counterbalance to Comfort’s volatility, floats through scenes with such peripheral presence that she might as well be part of the set design. For characters whose stake in this inheritance dispute should drive the narrative tension, the sisters are rendered as little more than narrative obstacles, impediments to Millicent’s story rather than fully realised individuals with their own grief and longing.
The dynamic between the reunited Millicent and Johnson bears the prospect of salvaging this film – the latter’s emergence brings with it a cogent backstory that could provide emotional heft if deployed masterfully – but somehow even that is squandered. Seal’s Nigerian accent is serviceable in the way that a student’s first attempt at pottery is serviceable: you can tell what it’s supposed to be, but you wouldn’t want it displayed prominently. More baffling, however, is the decision to christen him the “Singing Soldier” and then have him do almost no singing whatsoever. It’s an odd creative choice, akin to casting Muhammad Ali in a boxing film and then having him spend the entire runtime playing chess. When Seal finally does croon in the film’s closing moments, a duet with Olatunde that’s pleasant enough, it arrives too late to salvage what came before. The moment feels obligatory rather than earned, a box to be ticked rather than an organic culmination of the narrative.
The supposedly pivotal sequences, such as Millicent’s collapse during a performance and Johnson’s first meeting with his estranged daughter Bisola, are handled with such startling flatness that they fail to generate even a whisper of dramatic tension. A woman collapses on stage, and we feel nothing. A father meets his daughter after years of absence, and we remain unmoved. These are the moments that should anchor the film emotionally, that should make us lean forward in our seats, but Elba’s direction treats them with a curious detachment, as though he’s more interested in checking scenes off a list than in excavating their emotional resonance. The cuts are too swift, the camera too restless to let moments breathe.
Constance Olatunde as Bisola possesses a mellifluous voice that suggests she could hold her own in a proper musical, but she’s given precious little to work with beyond functioning as a narrative device: the next of kin, the daughter who must witness her mother’s decline and her parents’ attempted reconciliation. Ikpe Etim (4:4:44) and Seal share one scene that approaches something resembling chemistry, a moment where you can squint and see the film that Dust To Dreams might have been with a director willing to trust his actors to sit in discomfort. But this fleeting glimpse of potential is swiftly undercut by the film’s inability to commit to any one emotional register.
This brings us to the parade of Nollywood cameos. The appearances of Bisola Aiyeola, Eso Dike, Bamike “Bam Bam” Adenibuyan, Mimi Onalaja, Stephanie Coker, and Beverly Osu (among others) reinforce the creeping suspicion that Dust To Dreams isn’t particularly interested in being a short film at all. Instead, it plays like an elongated commercial, a branded content piece dressed up in the trappings of narrative cinema. If the goal was to craft an advertorial for the city’s nocturnal revelry, it succeeds in fits and starts. But as a short film tackling weighty themes like grief and the fragility of family ties, this feels like a profound abdication of ambition.
The film’s 20-minute runtime should have worked in its favour. Short films, at their best, distill narrative and emotion to their essence, stripping away the extraneous to reveal something fundamental about the human condition. This one does the opposite: it tries to cram in too many narrative threads without giving any of them the space to develop meaningfully. A more disciplined script, perhaps guided by a ruthless story editor, could have trimmed the fat and amplified the moments that matter.
In the end, Dust To Dreams bundles all the right ingredients – family dysfunction, music as spiritual salve, the specter of mortality – and produces something that tastes disappointingly bland. For a story about savouring little moments in time, it’s ironic that the film itself never pauses long enough to let us savour anything at all. We’re left with the faint echo of what might have been: a poignant exploration of love, loss, and legacy reduced to a series of pleasant images and undercooked ideas.
For keen observers, it’s yet another frustrating outing with the EbonyLife slate of Nigerian productions, where films reach for the stars but ultimately stumble in the dust, per usual. It’s commonplace to see glossy projects marred by either wonky screenplays (as with The Wedding Party 2), or patchy performances (as with Oloture), or sometimes both (as with Chief Daddy 2).
Dust To Dreams is screening at this year’s BFI London Film Festival from October 8-19 for its European premiere.
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Side Musings
- In the opening scene, Eku Edewor looked like her hairstylist had been holding a grudge against her.
- Why do Nigerian actors still resort to the clutch-cough-then-collapse format in 2025?
- I love Nse Ikpe Etim, but surely, she has other facial expressions than the two or three things she does with her lips, no?
- In the scene where Millicent’s sisters inform Bisola that they will sell the club, Eku Edewor pulls the incredible feat of deploying three different accents in twenty seconds.
- Did that Millicent voiceover begin with a male voice, before switching to Ikpe Etim’s midway through?
