On and off the screen, Omowunmi Dada radiates a sweetness that charms anyone she meets. That charm is palpable as she graciously opens the door to her warmly lit and tastefully decorated hotel room to […]
It’s still very much AFRIFF season over here until the last AFRIFF post drops. For this reason, we’re highlighting some of the interviews that filmmakers, actors had with What Kept Me Up, right from the […]
African filmmakers have gone through before. Mati Diop (Atlantics) and Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch) both brought early projects to Locarno’s Open Doors, years before the platform committed to more countries on the […]
At the premiere of Red Circle, veteran rapper Michael ‘Ruggedman’ Ugochukuwu Stephens, also a cast member of the crime thriller, opens up about his early days in Nollywood, revealing that his foray into acting began […]
2023 marked the beginning of a trilogy of epic moments in the African animation industry. It kicked off with Kizazi Moto, a collaboration between Disney and South Africa’s Triggerfish Animation Studio. This was followed in […]
I had worked on the announcement a month before WURA premiered on January 23, 2023, noting with interest that it was an adaptation of the long-running South African series The River, which continued airing until 2024 with over 1,000 episodes. The most intriguing aspect at the time was imagining how a story of such scale and thematic intensity would translate into the Nigerian context. I took it seriously by watching the first four episodes of both versions to compare and understand the adaptations. Still, I was unable to commit to either because of time. But many others did.
Red Circle marks a turning point as the first feature film from Rixel Studios, a company Nora Awolowo founded at the age of nineteen. “This film was born out of me and the team wanting to leave our comfort zone,” the filmmaker says in an interview with What Kept Me Up, alongside Abdul Tijani-Ahmed and Akay Mason. “We wanted to tell a story drawn from everyday Nigerian life, something close to my heart.”
Chinaza Clara Ezeani’s love affair with acting ignited at a tender age when she was captivated by the on-screen magic of Ini Edo and Jim Iyke in The Cat. Inspired by these actors, she embarked […]
In the critically acclaimed film, With Difficulty Comes Ease, Uzoamaka Aniunoh embodies the role of Zainab, a recently widowed Muslim woman. She is stuck within the confines of her mother-in-law’s home and mandated to complete […]
Meet Ebele Okoye, Nigeria’s first female animator and arguably one of Africa’s first female animators. Born in the late 60s right in the middle of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, Okoye’s life is filled with unique […]
