Nigerian Filmmaker Funke Akindele Knows She Can Break Her Own Record

It's a hot and sticky day in late November. Funke Akindele and more than 100 cast and crew members are at a large production site in Lagos, Nigeria, for her upcoming film Everybody Loves Jenifa. They will spend two days filming promotional content for the film and the music video for Everybody Loves Christmas, a song that was released ahead of the film's premiere. Large production trailers are parked throughout the compound, and gigantic filming paraphernalia constantly moves around. The sounds of artisans building new sets from scratch fill the air.

At the center of it all is the actor and filmmaker Akindele. Despite the scale of the production, Akindele, who is deeply involved in every aspect of the creative process — writing most of her soundtracks, including the one for Everybody Loves Jenifa— remains calm and composed. For example, while getting her make-up done, she checks in with the costume team, makes necessary adjustments and simultaneously manages to conduct interviews.

New voice, old story

In 2023, Funke Akindele set a new record for the highest-grossing film at the Nigerian box office with her movie, A Tribe Called Judah, which earned over one billion naira. With her upcoming film, Akindele aims to surpass that record once again.

To make that happen, Akindele drew inspiration from her most successful film franchise, Jenifa. Jenifa started as a comedy-drama film in 2008 and has since expanded into multiple films, an award-winning series, and now a highly anticipated blockbuster. The franchise follows the journey of an ambitious woman who remains undeterred by her social awkwardness.

The character Jenifa, played by Akindele, is known for her social awkwardness, marked by poorly spoken English and a bold, albeit unintentionally troublesome, personality. This portrayal has turned her into a cultural icon. The series influenced popular youth culture in Nigeria, offering a new linguistic vocabulary of intentionally butchered English to evoke laughter from the audience. The storyline often takes unexpected twists and addresses various societal issues, such as domestic abuse and poverty, while providing a gripping yet funny perspective on what it means to be young and ambitious in Lagos.

For Akindele, figuring out how to blend the chaos and multifaceted themes that the Jenifa franchise is known for meant settling on the most compelling themes and expanding them.

A matter of scale

A definitive part of Akindele's work can be found in her appetite for scale. In Battle on Buka Street,she simulated a large market area that was at the heart of the film. In A Tribe Called Judah, she orchestrated an expansive, well-paced heist that kicked off a series of catastrophic events. And in Everybody Loves Jenifa, she took the story to a different territory, not just with the ambitious productions but with the cast.

Featuring familiar and fresh faces, Everybody Loves Jenifa revives the Nollywood-Ghallywood collaboration that characterized late 2000s Nollywood. The film combines sharp wit with bursts of high-energy action, creating a well-crafted story filled with delightful humor and expertly executed twists and turns.

It effectively taps into nostalgia without overly relying on past successes, instead daring to establish its own identity. Akindele expands an already rich world, keeping it intriguing and allowing characters to evolve in surprising ways. This approach transforms familiar storylines into unpredictable narratives, leaving audiences amazed by a franchise many believe they know thoroughly.

It's a process that Akindele describes as tedious and lengthy. "But you know this is what I love to do," she says. "Content creation and filmmaking are my thing. So I'm used to it, but it's not easy."

Alongside the pressure of surpassing her previous artistic work and ensuring that viewers experience something fresh from a franchise that has been running for nearly a decade, Akindele is acutely aware of the responsibility she carries in her pursuit of breaking her own record. It's an important goal for her as a filmmaker in an industry as demanding as Nollywood. But there are no nerves, only an immense sense of responsibility.