A father trying to make a living by any means after motorbike taxis are banned. A lawyer helping his friends with a new startup hampered by new government policies. A doctor struggling with his superior’s order not to treat gunshot victims. Director Afolabi Olalekan weaves these and other stories into a rich tapestry in his thrilling debut film Freedom Way, a Crash-esque exploration of oppression in Lagos, Nigeria.
Although the subject matter gets dire, Freedom Way is a genuinely hopeful movie that seeks to illuminate corruption and inequality. Its rousing music and thoughtful cinematography highlight a vivid picture of people and their proximity to the human forces at work all around them.
Freedom Way had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Director Afolabi Olalekan and writer-producer Blessing Uzzi sat down with Screen Speck to discuss the film’s development, class boundaries in Nigeria and beyond, and how the world’s problems are as interconnected as Freedom Way‘s characters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Screen Speck: I was wondering if you could tell me what drew you to this story.
Blessing Uzzi: The experiences of people here and what we’ve seen living here, growing up in Nigeria, and interacting with people, essentially, so it’s loosely based on true events. So that was mostly why I thought, okay, this would be a great story to tell, as it will be relatable. And it could also just be us adding our voice to [those] of the countless people here and people all over the world who have concerns over police brutality and corruption and all of that.
Screen Speck: I believe I read that Freedom Way started off as a short film, so I was wondering if you could take me through the writing process and tell me how long it took for this to come together.
Blessing Uzzi: I wrote a short film about four years ago, actually. Four years ago, there was a campaign in Nigeria called “Treat now, ask questions later,” [#TreatFirstQuestionLater] and the whole idea of the campaign was to encourage doctors to treat patients with a gunshot wound. And after that, you can find out, “Oh, is this person a criminal? Where did this come from?” And you can advise the police, you know? And that was where it came from. So it was even called ‘The Report,’ and that was what the film was called. And then at the same time, there was a time when there was an okada ban, or cycle ban, in Lagos. And because I was heavily inspired by the 2004 Crash, and that was how we started writing the feature film.
Screen Speck: That makes sense, especially with Freedom Way‘s depiction of multiple characters coming together and all being connected. I wonder how that relates to your own filmmaking philosophy, both with this film and just in general.
Afolabi Olalekan: I think it’s pretty simple for me. I think it’s the idea of, filmmaking should be stories that people can relate with, stories that tell experiences, a story that lives beyond us, stories that people could always go back to years after — just like we had referenced Crash in this film, people could also reference this 10 years from now and say, “Oh, this film is also referenced by Freedom Way from 2024.” I think that that kind of like sells the idea of filmmaking for me in general.
Screen Speck: What do you want international audiences to take away from the film? And what about Nigerian audiences? Are those things different, or the same?
Afolabi Olalekan: Yeah, I think they’re pretty much the same, based on what Blessing had said about lending our voices to the thousands or millions of voices of people saying the exact same thing we’re saying in the film, you know, lending voices to people that are going through exactly what we’re going through. Because this is a worldwide problem, but we are telling it from a Nigerian point of view, what we are seeing here, but several countries are going through either similar things or something much worse. So this is just our own way of lending our voices to the millions of Nigerian voices and youths going through the exact same thing, because this film just mirrors everybody’s experiences one way or the other.
Screen Speck: I think the film really touches well on issues of class especially. Everyone kind of has their own relationship to the rules, but death is the only thing that can affect people equally. How did you think about class in this story specifically?
Blessing Uzzi: Yeah, most of the things, I think, generally, even in other parts of the world, you would agree with me that class is a big deal. Certain things affect poor people more than they affect the rich people, even though being wealthy, being in power, shifts people from a lot of things, naturally. And Nigeria, yes, we have the wealthy class, but we have a lot of average class and obviously low income class citizens, and it was important to speak to those people, to talk about them, because most of these policies, government policies, and police brutality and all of that affects them the most. Yes, once in a while it gets to affect the people in the upper class, like you said, mostly death, because death doesn’t respect anyone’s money, comes to everyone, you know. It was important to show that in the film, because those are also the class going through that, mostly here. So it’s true in every sense of it, that this is the class of people that experience this the most in this particular way. So I feel like that, the nuances in the film, you know, in terms of culture and all of that, where we are from, this is what we see here. And I believe even in other parts of the world, is what you see. Some of these policies, yes, affect everyone, but it hits harder on certain classes of people.
Screen Speck: I’m intrigued by the title “Freedom Way.” How did you decide on that?
Blessing Uzzi: The short film was ‘The Report,’ and then when I wrote a feature, it was named No Way Out. Because I thought everyone was stuck, and they were all trying to find freedom and fight for their lives. And then I remember one day we were driving, the director and I — there is a road in Nigeria called Freedom Way, a popular road called Freedom Way in Lagos. And the funniest part of it is, ironically, police people are always on that road, stopping us. And you know, we’re just driving, and I was like, what if we named this film Freedom Way? We were like, “Hmm,” both of us were like, “No.” And then another day, we just thought, “This is the perfect title for this film, because the characters are all fighting for something.” There’s a fight happening internally, externally, they’re dealing with so much. And they’re saying that none of us is free unless we are all free, you know, now comes to play in mind, because these characters are also interconnected, and you realize that what affects one affects the other. Which still ties to that saying that until all of us are free, none of us is truly free, because whatever affects the next person can equally affect you tomorrow. So we are, at the end of the day, we are all interconnected.
Screen Speck: I was also really curious about the portrayal of the startup itself.
Blessing Uzzi: Most lawyers generally don’t have money in this part of the world, except if you work for a big law firm, or you are, like, a senior advocate or something. So he’s a lawyer who’s gone through so much in this space and just wanted to leave, while his friends wanted him to stay back and work with them. So normally, how startups work in Nigeria is people raise money from investors – it doesn’t mean that they are rich themselves, but obviously, for you to have access to certain things, you have to be a little bit high up there, essentially. So you are not upper class, but somewhere maybe between the middle class and all of that. And they set out to cater to this problem of, you know, there is traffic in Lagos. How do we get people to move faster, to get to their locations faster, to not be late for their meetings, to not be late to the airport, all of those things? And they thought, “We could work with these riders, these people with their motorcycles, and empower them and enable them, thereby solving that problem.”
But running a startup also means you are answerable to your investors. Even as a filmmaker, when I get money from investors, yes, I run the show, but I answer the investors behind the scenes and explain, “Oh, this is what is happening with Freedom Way. This is where we are, and this is where we hope to be.” And that was essentially what that dynamic was about, is that they’ve taken loans, they’ve also gotten some investors to partner with them. And you essentially have to answer to these people, because they are also seeing the news, and they know what is going on in the country, so what’s happening to the business they’ve just invested in. So you sort of like, also have to explain yourself to them, so some sort of accountability was what I was going for with that.
Screen Speck: What’s next – for the film, the production company, and your own projects?
Blessing Uzzi: For the production company, we have a couple of things in development, from series to features that we’re looking to do next year. We have a couple of shorts we are wrapping up with, that we’re going to shoot before the end of this year, actually, with other directors and other writers in Nigeria here. For Freedom Way, we are still submitting to other festivals and also having distribution and sales conversations.
Freedom Way is currently showing at the Philadelphia Film Festival.
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