BlackStar: Chisom Chieke’s short film unfolds almost uncertainly, like a painting in progress whose artist is in conflict with their muse. There is a quiet tension that simmers within Adanma (Karen Obilom) and Trey (Marcus Scribner), the lovers at the heart of this simple narrative. Their beauty holds your attention, yet their chemistry lacks the magnetic pull to fully anchor the audience.
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Food For The Soul offers a brief glimpse into the romance between Adanma, a Nigerian-American artist, and Trey, her Black American techie boyfriend. Both actors tread familiar ground—Obilom from Cultural Clash (2019), where she wrestled with diasporic identity, and Scribner from Black-ish, a film exploring the Black experiences of a close knit Black family. Director Chieke, however, chooses a restrained lens, letting multiculturalism and Black identity hum softly beneath the surface rather than dominate the story.
But, as with all love stories, there’s always a hitch. Both Ada and Trey’s families do not approve of the relationship. While this is not based on the issue of skin colour, their disapproval is not entirely devoid of cultural or racial sentiments and expectations. Trey’s grandmother slyly suggests a different girl for Trey, a girl she says she knows will make cute babies together with Trey as though she’s implying Ada’s brown skin won’t produce the same adorable children with her grandson’s skin tone. Chieke, who also serves as writer, doesn’t want to burden her story with commentary on multiculturalism and colorism, but these themes linger, cut from the fabric of her own experiences as a Nigerian-American.
Where the drama is hilarious and conscious is between Ada and her father (played by Richard Mofe-Damijo who doubles as a producer) during a phone conversation. She is in her flat in Philadelphia making jollof rice while her father chides her gently from his sitting room in Lagos in an annoying heavy Nigerian accent that only Nigerian characters in Hollywood can pull off. The thousand miles that separate them subtract nothing from their warm, close father-daughter relationship. Yet, Ada can’t bring herself to tell her father that she has quit medical school to pursue her dream as an artist. It breaks her heart that she can’t tell her father, a father who loves but cannot comprehend her and this is the only time I feel empathy for her.
Ignorant of her new career path, her father advises her to date someone who is in her class, casually mentioning a family friend whose medical doctor son has just moved to Philadelphia. His disapproval stems not from race but from cultural expectations of a successful Nigerian parent who wants his daughter to be successful and success for him is his daughter becoming a medical doctor, earning a fat salary and possibly settling down with someone of her own ethnicity or at least nationality (Nigeria). To an elderly African parent, a Black American is still distinctly American, regardless of skin colour.
For all its ambition, there is no strong chemistry between the two lead actors, but they are not so terrible as actors. They both nurse a tension that is understood, and they carry it perhaps too much that it flattens the weight of their intimacy and reduces it to just a script action instead of a soulful performance. The upbeat cinematography by Wren Rene uplifts the mood of the film most times, but Chieke’s direction is not entirely effective. Though her focus on the story holds steady, the execution lacks sharpness.
However, the film brilliantly succeeds at the end to quietly pass a similar message through a simple meal of jollof rice and ribs shared by the lovers, serving as the metaphorical Food For The Soul, a reminder that the Nigerian staple and American dish can exist side by side on the same plate to show that love transcends cultural and familial divides.
Food For The Soul screened at the BlackStar Film Festival 2025, held July 31 – August 3.
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