In Nigeria, where the LGBTQ+ community faces challenges on a daily basis in the face of strict anti-LGBTQ+ laws, the very act of telling stories about queer characters simply living their lives is a disruptive one. Director Wapah Ezeigwe is part of a new wave of directors telling queer Nigerian stories, and pushing back against decades of misrepresentation of LGBTQ+ characters in the country’s film canon. He tells writer Ugonna-Ora Owoh about the risks that come with telling these stories, and the power they can have for a community that’s been underrepresented and vilified for far too long.
Nigerian director Wapah Ezeigwe uses film to tell queer love stories, and to explore what it means to be a queer person living in a country with harsh anti-LGBTQ+ laws. His debut film, “Country Love,” tells the story of a femme queer man, who leaves home for 15 years due to homophobia he endured from his family, only to return and find out that nothing has changed. It gained a wide audience locally and internationally, and made it into film festivals including Out On Film, an Oscar-qualifying festival. His forthcoming film “A Little Time Left” details “the life of an ailing pianist who is living the last days of his life in emotional despair, until he is helped by his compassionate lover to reunite with who he truly is,” he explains.
For decades, the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, has portrayed LGBTQ+ people in a negative light, often painting gay characters as a demonic influence, sometimes even showing these characters being subjected to “conversion therapies.” When they aren’t being painted in this “evil” light, they’re used as a form of comic relief; characters are cast in absurd forms or placed into plotlines that ridicule them. All of this, of course, contributes further to the already negative perceptions of the LGBTQ+ community in Nigerian society. Though there is a new wave of exceptional filmmakers breaking these misconceptions, change is slow.
“Nigerian cinema has very few queer-centered stories and, of course, the reason lies in the reluctance of filmmakers to approach such subject matter,” Ezeigwe explains. “At the moment, queer characters are very sparse in the Nigerian cinema and even when seen, they have no substantial influence on the story, and I think that’s a problem. It is when one is seen that they are known to exist, and it is when one is experienced that they are reckoned with. The insubstantial representation of queer characters in Nigerian cinema makes queer existence watered-down, unusual, unfamiliar.”
Stories are a representation of who we are, our identity, our culture, of the place we come from and sometimes even of the place we are headed.
The new wave of queer Nigerian filmmakers are battling to deconstruct these decades-long misconceptions, and to shape a deliberate idea of queerness through unique and flourishing characters, but they face both an existing set of laws programmed against them and a society unwilling to entertain LGBTQ+ stories.
In 2014, the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act was passed, criminalizing same-sex union and practice with up to 14 years in prison, and punishing organizations who support LGBTQ+ rights with prison sentences or fines. Not only do filmmakers such as Ezeigwe risk being persecuted under this law, they also risk having their films banned by the country’s National Film and Video Censors Board which, in 2020, refused to approve “Ìfé,” a romantic film about two Nigerian women who fall in love, despite its creators never having submitted it for review.
However, Ezeigwe believes the future of queer cinema is bright. “There is a wave of young filmmakers who are very intentional about queer representation. I want to see myself grow old in this art form,” he says. “As humans we have things that we feel strongly about and gravitate towards. For me, it’s telling these human stories on the big screen and specifically bringing to the center those who are perceived as ‘other.’ All stories matter and they are a representation of who we are, of our identity, of our culture, of our history, of our memories, of the place we come from and sometimes even of the place we are headed. There’s a need for these diverse stories, for the sake of the people who feel represented through them, and for the sake of being able to connect with one another’s experience.”