A vicious would-be
suicide bomber is heading for Nigeria’s vast metropolis of Lagos and
only a down-on-her-luck prostitute can stop a horrific attack. This
ominous fiction is part of “Boko Haram”, a new movie by Ghanaian-Nigeria
director Pascal Amanfo. The film has been banned by censors in Ghana
and shunned by cinema owners in Nigeria.
A
movie inspired by the very real and brutal Islamist group active in
Nigeria was potentially so inflammatory that it was released in the
country with the title “Nation Under Siege” to avoid a backlash.
“Boko
Haram”, loosely translated, means “Western education is forbidden” and
the group has said it is fighting to impose a strict Islamic state in
mainly Muslim northern Nigeria.
Movie director admits that his
film raises uncomfortable questions about the Boko Haram conflict, which
has left thousands dead in northern Nigeria since 2009
“I want to provoke people to see these things,” he said.
However,
he didn't expect that it would be banned. For weeks after its March
release, the film made brisk sales in Accra, where DVDs are sold on the
street from shipping container store fronts or off makeshift wooden
shelves for a couple of dollars.
But when the Ghanaian film
control board found out about “Boko Haram”, it order that all the
promotional posters be torn down stating that the film was released
without authorization. The police swooped down on vendors at a busy bus
station in the capital and confiscated the copies they were selling.
Movie producer was also arrested and only freed after paying a 2,000 cedi ($920, 680 euro) fine.
“We would not allow a film with the title ‘Boko Haram’ to be released in Ghana,” said Ken Addy of the Ghana Cinematographic Exhibition Board of Control.
“We realised this was a film we had to be careful about so as not to antagonise a neighbouring country.”
Some
episodes depict defenceless villagers being gunned down and children
murdered by jihadist gunmen, evoking the style of attack Boko Haram has
used during its uprising.
Some aspects of the plot are inspired by
popular but unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, including claims that
senior Nigerian politicians are behind the bloodshed. In one of the
moments in the film, an extremist discusses a safe house in Lagos
financed by a lawmaker sympathetic to Boko Haram.
Nigeria’s
President Goodluck Jonathan said last year he believed Boko Haram
backers were in his government, but later distanced himself from that
remark. No politician or official has ever been concretely tied to the
insurgency.
The Ghana film board chief Addy declined to comment on
its content beyond saying that “Boko Haram” would not get approval for
sale in Ghana without a name change and the removal of certain gruesome
scenes.
Mustapha Adams, head of Ghana’s Film Distributors
Association, speculated that some were concerned the film sought to
arouse sympathy for Boko Haram, or even that finance had potentially
been raised among supporters of the extremist group.
He considered the response to “Boko Haram” by Ghanaian officials as an overreaction, saying:
“What is there to hide?”
In
Nigeria, the film was released on DVD but Amanfo said many cinema
owners recoiled when approached about screening the movie, which cost
roughly $18,000 to make.
One theatre manager in the capital Abuja
said he could not imagine showing it in the city where Boko Haram blew
up a United Nations building in 2011, killing at least 25 people.
Nollywood
is the third largest in the world, releasing hundreds of typically
low-budget films each year, sometimes involving witchcraft or divine
intervention with a little sexual promiscuity thrown in.
Ghana’s
much smaller industry (“Ghollywood”) generally imitates the Nollywood
formula, which has generated films with massive popularity across
Africa, even if their reach outside the continent has been limited.
But
some of the region’s directors have been attempting to change both
style and themes, seeking to explore contemporary issues like Islamic
extremism or political corruption while moving away from traditional
stories driven by magic and mysticism.
“Boko Haram” — in which a
radical Islamist bomber has a life-altering conversation with a
commercial sex worker — may not be a study in gritty realism.
But
Amanfo added that the official reaction reaction has been frustrating
because he believed his film was targeted simply for trying to achieve a
filmmaker’s core mission: to probe current and relevant issues.
“If we can’t tell the stories of our society then we have failed as artists.”
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