In the beginning, there were baton-passed stories about movements. In those vocally transmitted stories, African children are told of ancestors who dared to travel miles searching for something or a place to claim as home. During this time, movement was hinged on survival. People were scouting and hunting for the best land to plant, herd and live. As children get older and get frustrated with their economic realities, they too, like those distant ancestors, started moving and searching for anything and everything. Thus, movement and migration is an innate human endeavor. And the lore of migration stories has woven itself into our daily existence. It’s in our songs, prayers, culture and anecdotes. As natural oral storytellers, Africans have hitherto stretched the hands of those stories to willing children who further extend it to their children. This makes it unsurprising that in contemporary African society where filmmaking is continuously courting attention, African filmmakers have contended with the complexities of migration.
Ousmane Sembène’s 1966 La noire de … (Black girl …), one of the first sub-Saharan African films, has confronted what migration means on a personal and national level. Following its lead, Diouana, on a personal level, who decides to leave Senegal to France as a domestic staff, we witness the unexplainable emotional disconnection she had to witness. Upon migrating, her friends, family and familiar safe spaces become a remote presence in her mind. To assuage this emotional disconnection, Diounna left Senegal with a totem that reminded her of home, a mask. On a national level, her migration exposes racial discrimination. As Sembène is known for, his films deeply explores political and colonial themes against the story of a working class Senegalese and the seed of that are in Black Girl.
There are migration-themed films that framed its narrative from a female-focused perspective. In 2018, Joy, written and directed by Sudabeh Mortezai, looked into the triggering realities of migration from the lens of sex work. Following the titular character, the film uncomfortably invites viewers into the grime world of sex work and how these mostly unsuspecting Nigerian and African women get caught up in a sex and human trafficking ring. Joy, unmindful of the physical and mental risk she gets exposed to as a sex worker, is expected to pay her exploitative pimp and send black tax home. These constant calls for help are cue of how socially, economically and politically stagnant her home country is. With no assurance of change, the film intimate us with the psychology of Joy and her fellow immigrants. From their listless and spirited individual and communal conversations, we feel the pangs of their hurts and pain. In 2024, under Kenneth Gyang’s direction, the world witnessed the arrival of Oloture: The Journey, a miniseries devoted to the story of an undercover journalist working to expose sex and human traffickers. The series, in its grime depiction, hints at why Nigerians, in their large numbers, leave their country not out of desperation as the media will have us believe, but out of relief from their daily woes. Gyang’s Oloture: The Journey goes a step further by pointing accusative fingers at human traffickers who profit off the desire and interest of these Nigerians.
Salvador Calvo’s Adu follows the harrowing story of six-year-old Adu, who, after witnessing several traumatic events, decided, with her sister, to flee Cameroon for Spain in search for their father. Littered with grief-stricken scenes, the film is a reflection on the realities of immigrants. From the opening scene, captured by Sergi Vilanova’s camera, we are made to understand migration as a move for survival. For the migrant, leaving their country isn’t an anti-patriotic move, it’s a movement for self preservation. Based on a true story, Adu touches on the impact of migration from a child’s perspective. Through Adu’s innocent eyes, witness the risk, danger and determination of every migrant.
Mati Diop’s Atlantics, her feature directorial debut, is a blend of romance and mystery. The film premiered and in 2019 the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, making her the first Black woman to win an award in the festival’s history. What’s brilliant in Diop’s film is that its major character doesn’t leave Senegal but we witness the effect of governmental negligence and how it motivates migration decisions. Claire Mathon’s cinematography constantly conditions our attention towards the sea. This serves as a visual metaphor of how close the decision to leave is on the characters’ mind. Narratively reminiscent of Diop’s Atlantics, Chuko and Arie Esiri’s Eyimofe follows two intending migrants(Rosa and Mofe) who didn’t leave the shore of Nigeria. But, referencing Warsan Shire, for Rosa and Mofe, Nigeria is the mouth of a shark. Their daily reality, in Lagos, Nigeria’s most canevarious city, is filled with gore and depressing news which both compels and propels their migration interests.
Elegant in their simplicity, the people in both films are motivated by their desire to escape harsh conditions, to be respected and to be seen. Though they’re physically stuck in their home countries, they are mental migrants as most Africans. Disillusioned and exhausted of their daily realities, Africans listlessly move through the rigour of their daily lives hoping that, by some divine orchestration or luck, they will escape their country. This mental migration phase places citizens in a limbo where a sizable chunk of their youthful lives gets spent scouting and plotting escape routes. Similar to the characters in Eyimofe and Atlantics, a large number of Africans meekly accept their lot. For these people, it’s a dull submission of their realities, not a defeatist stance.
All through the films and TV series that I have mentioned, the active and inactive mental decision of these characters to leave, in my understanding, implies their continued refusal to accept the shoddy social, economical, cultural and political realities of their immediate environment and country. Their migration dream isn’t an apathetic decision. Rather, it’s a human decision to find preservation in a space that supposedly provides a better alternative. It matters less the political and economic realities they will encounter in the cities and counties they have mentally migrated to or will geographically move to.
The filmmakers whose films I have spotlighted in this essay are a meager amount of an exhaustive list of African films and series that have tackled migration. However, they offer a lens through which a keen reader and watcher could start interrogating migration from an African perspective. As minority groups, especially members of LGBTQ community, continually advocate for their place and space in media spaces, there will definitely be the rise of documentaries and films that address the nuances of migration from a minority group perspective. These documentaries when they start arriving in their numbers will provide a “complete” glossary of African’s perspective on movement and migration.
Writer: Seyi Lasisi
Editors: Chimee Adioha, Amaka Obioji
Art: Diaspora Africa