Social commentary in Nollywood movies have a long history. And for filmmaker Omoni Oboli, she returns to this template with her upcoming movie Wings of a Dove, which seemingly revolves around the orbit of the Wives of Strike movies in the context of surplus female characters and girl-child activism.
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The trailer, released yesterday, features a rural Northern landscape and regressive traditions that violates teenage girls and harmfully stunts their development. It is also particularly distressing that this is the everyday reality for girls in some parts of Northern Nigeria. Wings of a Dove follows the story of two young Northern girls who are married off to men. One of them is fourteen. The other is played MTV Shuga Naija alum Amal Umar who, incidentally, plays an acerbic Northern girl on the show and deals with the sexual trappings that peak at adolescence.
Aside English, some of the characters can be heard speaking French: stalwart Zach Orji and Omoni Oboli exchange a few words in the language and it is, well, quite convincing. The rural students speak tentative French too, in class, which can only mean that they are taught the language. Omoni Oboli’s character, how do I put this, has a kind of saviour complex. “I’d be damned if I let them win,” she says, determined, perhaps referring to the fight against child marriage, female genital mutilation, etc. It’s reminiscent of Stephanie Linus’ 2014 movie Dry, with its social resonance and Linus’ character hellbent on saving the day.
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Omoni Oboli tends to veer towards sanctimonious pontification, and we really hope that this film doesn’t fall into that rut. The travails the girls this film is supposed to shed a light on are too important to be derailed by personal ambition.
Wings of a Dove also stars Sani Danja, Yakubu Mohammed, and Martha Felix. The movie is slated to be released before the end of the year and you can check out the trailer below.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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