Nollywoodweek: There is a very good chance that Hussaini would break your heart. The eighteen-minute-long film opens in a mosque, where Hussaini, among a small congregation of men, bows in prayer. We then follow him on his bike to his small, worn home in a shanty, where his pregnant wife, Amina, waits.
Stephen Okonkwo’s screenplay (from a story by Orire Nwani and Ifeanyi Paul Ndianaefo) lets the film pay attention to the textures of this life in the small negotiations that define intimacy under pressure. A stray comment about a stuffed doll meant for their unborn child registers as a hurt on his wife’s countenance, and what was once tender grows tense. He apologizes. She softens. They move on. This is how they hold together.
When Hussaini (Abba Ali Zaky) mentions that his mother will be visiting from Kano, the equilibrium shifts again. There is no room, no preparation, no real plan. Why was he only telling her about it now?
They repeat their circle of holding together.
Outside the home, Hussaini works as a commercial motorcyclist, an okada rider. He moves strangers from one point to another, often invisible to them except as a function. The film lingers here on glances and tone, the subtle ways people diminish what they depend on. This accumulates finely into a persistent tension.
There is also a gentleness that runs through the film, particularly in the relationship Hussaini shares with his wife (Ijapari Ben-Hirki) and mother (Tina Alfred). When she (his mother) arrives, she brings with her small tokens of care, including traditional remedies she believes would be helpful to Amina. Hussaini responds with a careful balance of cheer and resistance that his wife cannot take the herbs, before tossing them into a burning fire on his way out.
There is, admittedly, something familiar about the emotional architecture of Hussaini. The struggling but loving couple, as well as the pregnancy, shadow an approaching tragedy, which viewers of films like this might almost immediately recognize as a banal trope. Many viewers might sense where the film is headed long before it arrives there, but again, for the unassuming, there’s a very good chance that Hussaini would break the heart.
For a short film, Hussaini is remarkably restrained. Its cinematography (handled by Muhammad Atta Ahmed) and editing (credited to Olalekan Afolabi) are simple, almost unassuming, but they serve the performances with precision. And the performances are where the film finds its deepest strength. Through Orire Nwani’s direction, Abba Ali Zaky (The Herd) plays Hussaini with an internalized gravity, never overstating emotion, never asking for sympathy, yet drawing it out all the same. Ijapari Ben-Hirki (Beyond the Veil) and Tina Alfred as Amina and Hussaini’s mother respectively also settle convincingly into their roles.
What Hussaini understands, perhaps most clearly, is how precarious a life like Hussaini’s can be. How easily it can tilt. How quickly an ordinary day can begin to feel like something else entirely.
If there is a limitation, it lies in the film’s brevity. There are emotional beats that might have deepened further with more time. But even this works in its favour: Hussaini feels less like a fully told story and more like a fragment of a life—interrupted, unresolved, and painfully real.
By the time it ends, what remains is sadness, an unobtrusive unease. The sense that nothing extraordinary had to happen for everything to change. And that is precisely what makes it so difficult to shake.
Produced by Conceptified Media, Hussaini screened at NollywoodWeek 2026. Hussaini is a 2026 AMVCA nominee in the short film category.
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Side Musings
- The funny thing about Hussaini is that there’s absolutely nothing funny about Hussaini.
