QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

The largest city of Nigeria is a bustling, fast-moving and loud metropolis, home to more than 15 million people. The settings are sombre. The adjacent lake from which Lagos takes its name offers little respite. The main arteries of the giant city are clogged with traffic, the skies are heavily polluted, with a gentle cloud of smog enveloping the landscape, and the buildings look cold and barren. While abject poverty is never portrayed, this soulless environment is unforgiving enough as it is. Most crucially, it is the lack of humanity and solidarity that suffocates these people. They are victims of their own crooked ways. Survival is defined by selfishness, while empathy is often criminalised.

Tech engineers Tayo (Mike Afolarin) and Themba (Jesse Suntele) have developed a revolutionary app called EasyGo, allowing the country’s large network of delivery motobikers to share rides and assets. This could change the lives of informal workers such as breadwinner Abiola (Adebowale Adedayo) and their families. Tayo and Themba soon find out firsthand that they are not in for an easy ride. A corrupt police officer (Femi Jacobs) sees as rich snobs, and subjects the hapless males to shocking threats and humiliation. He possesses a very twisted sense of justice and self-entitlement. His objective is to extract a very large sum of money through coercion. Tayo and Themba are not white. This is not a film about colonialism and racism. Instead, this is a bleak and despondent dog-eat-dog tale, at times bordering on nihilism.

Other plots concern a very hesitant doctor who refuses to play by the unwritten rules, police officers debating the profiling of young people, and medics refusing to treat a dying gunshot wound patient because he does not have a police report. Even the emergency services are deceitful here. And solidarity is criminalised. Helping out those who need you the most could land you in very serious trouble, we learn from the film’s final denouement. This explains why most people opt for complacence. They just sit back and watch unspeakable violence and abuse unfold right in front of their eyes. Citizenss are forced to make life-threatening and life changing decisions in a split second. The inevitable consequence is the complete dehumanisation of human beings. The commoditisation of injustice. The banalisation of evil.

There is a touch of colour and hope in the garments. The bright green, yellow and red dresses are in stark contrast to the dark atmosphere and morals. But that’s about it. And that’s not enough to provoke any change. After all, clothes don’t make decisions for people.

Afolabi Olalekan’s debut feature, which was written by Blessing Uzzi, is a scathing criticism of endemic corruption in Nigerian society. The film boasts some very strong sequences, however its confusing script does not reach it full potential. Some of the plots interconnect incoherently, and their closure is often scrappy and unsatisfactory. The creators infuse their film with a touch of religion by dividing it into four chapters, each one named after a verse of The Lord’s Prayer. It feels a little random, and its purpose is inconclusive. The unusual structure, combined with a couple of high-octane songs, flirting with emo and gospel, add a touch of eeriness to the story. Perhaps Olalekan and Uzzi want viewers to decide the real role of the Lord. Is He the almighty saviour, a mere observer, or perhaps a cynical accomplice?

Freedom Way just premiered in the Festival Favourites section of the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival. A collection of parables from hell.