We were invited by the organisers of the Eko International Film Festival to watch four American documentaries as part of the American Film Showcase. The documentaries promised to speak to the times we live in today. But because too many promise and fail films have made us cynical so we had no idea to expect from this event. Yet we went with an open mind and boy was it amazing!

We don’t even know why this is shocking. It’s Hollywood after all. Except that it was not. At least not Hollywood as is; none of all the glitz and glamour. They were four different stories of real people – young and old – focusing on various real issues that all somehow managed to tie in with every thing millennial.

The themes ranged from female participation in sports in Judd Ehrlich’s Keepers of the Game to tech and innovation empowerment for young girls in Leslie Chilcott’s Codegirl and finally, the greatest trend of the millennium with the self explanatory title, Generation Startup by Oscar-winning Cynthia Wade and Cheryl Miller Houser.

Before you ask where the fourth film went, it went with time. It so happens that even the U.S Consulate (the conveyors of the American Film Showcase to Nigeria) has been infiltrated by Nigerian time. We started about an hour late which meant eventually meant that the fourth documentary I am not racist. Am I? could not be shown. SMH. Yet so amazing were the three that we watched, that we won’t hold it against them.

In Keeper’s of the Game we were able to relate with the Mohawk Native American girls who fought against all traditional odds to play Lacross, a game that the Natives believe was sent by the Creator to be played by only men. Anyone who was brought up in a Nigerian home will understand the constant battle to find oneself in the midst of religion, tradition and cultural rules – girls don’t do this; only boys do that. The girls in the film could easily be swapped with the many girls from remote areas of Nigeria who have had to fight tooth and nail for their right to be educated in schools. Judd Ehrlich managed to follow through not only on the central theme but also focus on the different ways that a general problem can affect different individuals. This is something that all the films had in common for us- that relatability factor.

If, like us, you went in not being a big fans of documentaries based on the the absence of glossy pictures and the smoothness that pre-scripted productions have, then you would have enjoyed the element of pleasant surprise that lurked around the cinema corner for us. Everything that the documentaries lacked in stable camera handling, they made up for the ability to keep viewers on the edge and a certain type of suspense that you just don’t find in many documentaries. For example, no one one in the gallery knew that half way through Codegirl we’d learn that the 2015 winners the Technovation competition that the film follows were actually from …Oh wait!

What kind of humans would it make us to spoil it for everyone else.

We won’t even start with Generation Startup because then we won’t stop. Everything from the quality of production -this one is actually big budget with the PwC brand backing, Venture for America and an Oscar-winning co-filmmaker, it couldn’t have been failed in that regard. But that is not all that the film has going for it. It was able to bring home everything that gets lost in translation in the follow-your-passion rhetoric. Nothing is more important that a story like this at a time when almost every Nigerian youth is going the creative, start up, or self-employment route. So important, this film.

We caught up with Ms Ben-Uche of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S Consulate General in Lagos after the showcase to ask a question that lingered through the whole experience- how exactly did these films end up on our screen? Was it merely co-incidental that the issues addressed are just the kind that affect millions of young people across the country? 

She explained that of the 47 films curated by the University of South California School of Cinematic Arts for the showcase, the Consulate has had to shortlist even further to come up with only the most relatable films that will show in Nigeria through the Showcase which continues on Monday the 24th at the Silverbird Cinemas, Victoria Island.

Don’t you just love it when people do their homework?