BAFANA BAFANA

Bafana Bafana
Story – Simi Opeoluwa, Shola Fregene
Director – Shola Fregene

Starring:
Grace Amah – Kike
Nonso Diobi – Uche
Kayode Mosu – Baba Kike
Shola Fregene – Baba Kola

THEMES

Love

Tribalism

Cultural differences

The film is about two people who are deeply in love, but cannot really enjoy this happiness because of their tribes and father. Kike is a Yoruba girl played by Grace Amah, while Uche is an Igbo Boy played by Nonso Diobi. A meeting in a Lagos supermarket draws them close to each other, and they quickly fall head over heels whilst taking their National Youth Service. After everything seems to be going on well and they both seem to be madly in love, it is somewhat close to perfect romance, until they both decide to get married and try to introduce each other to their relatives and culture. Unfortunately for them, both of their parents are fervent tribalists and strongly oppose against the union Kiki and Uche.

Despite all their parents’ efforts to break them up, Kiki and Uche find every reason to get madly in love with each other, their fathers also try to outsmart and cause trouble for each other

REVIEW

For the first time I have to say that I am impressed with the story line and the aura of the actors put together into the film, it has a good feeling of Nigerian and tribal love, but there was a slight error in the film, because they fell in love when they met each other in the supermarket, whereas they did not know anything about themselves. But the fact that an average amount of comedy was tossed in to the film, made a film to watch.

There was a very funny scene towards the end of the movie where the two fathers got into a food fight. Baba Uche was his eating pounded yam and all of a sudden, he throws pieces of it at Baba Kike, who in starts throw his own, everything ends up being a food fight by the two old men. With both parties screaming “Return to sender!”

The movie had a nice ending to it, as Baba Kike and Baba Uche put aside their differences after remembering that they had previously encountered before, after being robbed on a bus going to Lagos. Because it was dark that night, they had not seen each other while running for their lives but had shared money and food with each other. They were amazed that the other had been so kind considering tribal affiliations

It was a nice movie nonetheless, considering that I am not a big fan of Nigerian movies I would give it 76%, mainly because of the story line.