From Get Out to Midsommar, the dilution of narrative tropes is a filmmaking staple. It is a misdirection technique to heighten or spotlight a specific element within the film. Coupled with being a great, slow-burner horror, Get Out is a film about racial disparity. It is most uncanny because the film starts out as a harmless romance. Kaelo Iyizoba’s Boy Meets Girl neatly falls into this category—a film that deliberately chooses narrative deception to highlight the death of innocence.
In a fateful meet-cute, a schoolboy, Musa (Gabriel Dung), and a girl (Aaliyah Atamazu) meet on a public bus in Northern Nigeria. They exchange soft looks, but it doesn’t take long for Musa to realise the girl is no longer innocent. Tightened around her thumb is a bomb detonator.
Iyizoba’s well-travelled short film is a bare film that heralds you into the moment of realisation. We find out with Musa that the girl is a terrorist and that she has her thumb on the detonator. Through a series of tight shots and Dutch angles and a haunting score underneath, Iyizoba highlights how a moment that started out utterly innocent between two—let us face it—children has now been damaged by terrorist influence in an unstable region. But it is the choice of subjects—two teenagers—and the film’s simple but deceptive premise that accentuates the film’s thematic severity. Kaelo Iyizoba deserves praise for this.
Just as terrorists who execute evil acts are not who they seem, so too is this short film. Approach with caution.
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