Twin brothers Chuko Esiri and Arie Esiri grew up in Nigeria but left the country for their education, and until recently, both seemed headed toward careers abroad. The brothers — now pioneers of a new wave of Nigerian arthouse cinema — premiered their acclaimed new
film “
Clarissa” at the
Cannes Film Festival and stopped by the American Pavilion, presented by IndieWire, to discuss how writing their 2020 debut feature “Eyimofe” became a turning point in their careers.
“The genesis of — the kernel that led to — the writing of the first feature was I had moved from New York back to Nigeria to do my National Youth Service,” said Chuko. “My first instinct was to go back to New York. It’s a great city, but the longer I stayed at home, the more I was rediscovering and falling in love with [Nigeria], wanting to tell a story of [it], learning eventually that maybe the thing you want is in front of you, no matter how challenging or difficult it may seem.”
Nigeria is not just the setting for “Eyimofe” and “Clarissa,” but the films’ subject. One of the unifying threads across both films — from the wealthy social circles of “Clarissa,” loosely adapted from “Mrs. Dalloway,” to the poverty-stricken characters of “Eyimofe” — is how deeply their lives are shaped by Nigerian history and politics. The country has undergone a turbulent three decades since transitioning to democracy after years of successive military coups.
“We say often [Nigerians] talk about politics like the British talk about the weather,” said Arie. “I think that speaks to the consideration of Nigeria as a place, how we are evolving as a society, and it’s hard to remove ourselves from that dialogue.”
Nigeria, of course, has a successful film business known as Nollywood, which pumps out thousands of films a year. Most are for the direct-to-streaming market and defined by their brisk pacing and blending of comedy and religion into heightened melodramas, all of which are an escape from the realities of modern-day Nigerian society. It is the antithesis of the neorealistic instincts of the Esiri brothers, who never contemplated a filmmaking career in their home country.
“I’m on the side of the fence that sees Nollywood as a genre and not an industry, because a healthy industry should be welcoming, it should encompass every type of filmmaker, and every type of story,” said Arie. “I can’t speak to other Nigerian filmmakers, but I think Nollywood has different concerns, which are very liberating in many ways, but it’s something that I am not really interested in engaging with. On a societal level, I think we engage with Nigeria in very physical, material, and ideological ways, which makes its way into our films.”
From a filmmaking perspective, the Esiri brothers are far more at home in the world of Cannes than Nollywood. Growing up, the first African arthouse film they saw was Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s 2006 “Daratt (Dry Season),” and that the masterworks of
African pioneer Ousmane Sembène were not readily available as they are now.
There was no model for the filmmaking careers they wanted, so pursuing their dreams in New York and Europe was a given — the more visually minded Arie coming up in the camera and lighting department in Paris before attending the film grad program at Columbia University, while Chuko first became a lawyer (a career he hated) before attending NYU’s graduate film school.
But when their return home lit a desire to tell Nigerian stories, the brothers believed their biggest accomplishment wasn’t necessarily making their well-reviewed feature debut. It was the funding: Nigerian institutions and companies fully backed the production costs of both “Eyimofe” and “Clarissa.”
“I think it’s about proving to the market back home and financiers that there are audiences for this type of film,” said Arie. “Making something viable investment-wise doesn’t necessarily have to mean commercial success; it can be cultural impact and exposure to other markets. That was a big thing for our first film. Our investors were a newspaper when they wanted to move into media and our little film got them exposed to 30 different markets across the world just by appearing at
festivals.”
The brothers are extremely hopeful that
Neon, which signed on to distribute “Clarissa” weeks before shooting commenced, will significantly expand that reach, but they see themselves as being part of something larger. Last year, director Akinola Davies Jr’s “
My Father’s Shadow” became the first Nigerian film to play at Cannes; one year later, “Clarissa” is the second. They want this to be the start of a new wave for Nigerian cinema.
“I think with the generation of filmmakers behind us, you see a film festival has started that showcases short films [in Nigeria],” said Chuko. “and y”You now have artistically minded shorts being made by local filmmakers, and obviously the internet and streaming has changed everything, so we have filmmakers that are exposed to all sorts of movies.”
