Sundance: In Birdie, Praise Odigie Paige evokes an ideal countryside with scenic shots of a home nestled in fields of green and a stream cutting through. There are no neighbours and it is isolated from the rest of the world, with clear skies and a family of two girls and their mother silently moving through the home they have made as refugees in the US. This perfection is disturbed by a radio chronicling the end of the Nigerian-Biafran War while Birdie (Precious Maduanusi), her sister English (Eniola Abioro) and her mother Celeste (Sheila Chukwulozie) kneel at a makeshift altar with a black and white picture of their father who they are hoping returns from the war. A lot of the film is spent waiting for him and it is within that waiting we find silence and routine: prayer, cooking, listening to the radio, wandering the fields. This waiting is captured with frames of nature as if the family have been arrested in this state till their patriarch returns.
Birdie is a film heavy on pretty imagery stitched together, but struggling to connect with its narrative. Its main story, the arrival of a man to spend some days in their home at the request of the reverend sisters housing them, is pulled together by these images with little dialogue and acting that undersells the pivotal moments. The silence in the film is supposed to be a tool and our attention is drawn to the faces, attempting to read the story’s text in sunken eyes, tiny smiles and hopeful perks but the trio of Eniola Abioro, Precious U. Maduanusi and Sheila Chukwulozie work through their performances with slight hesitation. Their best moment comes when the mother kneels in front of their altar and mines hope of her husband’s survival from the depths of despair.
The most interesting part shows up when the strange male visitor arrives in their home. The entry of this male figure (Said Marshall), who calls himself General, into their lives, at a period when they navigate the potential loss of a familiar one, creates a story balanced on how manhood frays the fabric of their woman-only refuge. One man’s arrival fundamentally alters the dynamics of a space the women have organized around absence, simultaneously representing hope for the father’s return and anxiety about masculine intrusion into a world that had learned to exist without it. For a family that has been waiting it seems almost cruel to see a man who is not their father, also from the war, arrive in their home safe and sound. This presence, despite its weak build up, allows Birdie speak out a truth that hangs over the idyllic countryside life their family had curated.
The Nigerian-Biafran war seeps into the core of Nigerian identity and the stories about it constantly evolve beyond those affected within the country. Birdie, a UK-US co-production, prods at the isolation of immigrant life (complicated by that war at home), but that prodding is often not deep enough. The short film is ultimately only held together by direction that captures gorgeous expanses of scenery, visuals that would have been elevated by a story less inert.
Birdie had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Short Film Program.
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Side Musings
- Parts of the film reminded me of “The Water Cure” by Sophie Mackintosh.
- There are more films these days grappling with the Biafran War from different perspectives, I welcome them all.
