A group of students from northern Nigeria are hoping to break into Nollywood thanks to the online success of their short films, created using very basic equipment. Sam Holder reports.
Known as The Critics, the teens made their first film, Redemption, in 2016. They saved for a month to buy the green fabric for the screen and taught themselves how to do visual effects by watching tutorials on Youtube, overcoming limitations like a lack of accessible internet and electricity.
The Kaduna state born teenagers have been together since 2011 and make short films together.
“We went into filmmaking because we were inspired by the movies we watched. Seeing the magic happen onscreen inspired us, and we thought, “what if we could create our own here?” So we started with creating comedy skits, and then we moved on to short films”. Said Godwin Josiah, one of the boys.
He added that they choose to explore sci-fi because that’s where all the cool things happen. They could explore a lot — aliens, flying spaceships, futuristic buildings — and also because the genre hasn’t really been explored in Nollywood.
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They’ve made about 20 short films so far. Some are on our YouTube channel called The Critics Company, our Instagram handle, and also our Facebook page called Comic World.
Source: reuters.com & konbini.com
