Ifeoma Chukwuogo has had an interesting few years. Her first major short film after film school, ‘Bariga Sugar’, the heartbreaking story of the budding but ultimately tragic friendship of the children of sex workers went viral when Chukwuogo first released it on Youtube. Chukwuogo would pull it from Youtube a few weeks later and put it through its paces in the festival circuit, garnering powerful responses where ever it was shown.

Chukwuogo since then has worked on ‘Under’, a gritty political thriller series, she teased in mid 2019. Full of Nollywood veterans and fronted by new talent, Under felt like a gamble to disrupt all the common tropes around Nigerian made political thrillers. We assume she is yet to find a satisfactory home for the series because it is yet to be released to the general public. In the meanwhile, Chukwuogo is pivoting towards documentary film making with her new project, No Victors.

NO VICTORS is a documentary series on the Nigeria-Biafra war.
Chronicling the human stories of the people who were witnesses and participants, on both sides.
Here’s a featurette of episode 1.
The protagonist is Weluche Ume, who was a voluntary Biafra child soldier (1) pic.twitter.com/18HIvffyUI

— Ifeoma Chukwuogo (@FizzyThatcher) January 26, 2020

The Nigerian Civil War is a contentious subject, no matter how you slice it. Much of the war has been the subject of propaganda on both sides, with the Nigerian government censoring any perspectives it considers divergent of its official stance on the War and its aftermath. Even influential creators like Chimamanda Adichie and Biyi Bandele have experienced first hand, the compromises that have to be made to tell the Biafran story when they tried to release an adaptation of Half Of A Yellow Sun  in Nigerian cinemas. Chukwuogo’s series uses found footage and interviews from participants in the Biafran war into a deep dive on the reality of war and how its consequences ripple into today.

Chukwuogo’s pedigree as a filmmaker gives us hope that she can tell a compelling story, and Biafra is well overdue for a revisit. We eagerly await a proper release.

But you can start here, with this featurette.

Edwin Okolo

Edwin Okolo is an author and journalist who has worked with YNaija, TheNativemag and the Naked Convos.