On Netflix charts throughout the world, a Nigerian action thriller that presents a compelling tale of police brutality and corruption in the continent’s most populous nation has attracted record viewing. It serves as a reminder of the strength and promise of Nigeria’s quickly expanding film sector.
With a high ranking of No. 3 in the second week, “The Black Book” spent three weeks in the top 10 English-language titles on the platform worldwide.
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It had 5.6 million views in the first 48 hours of its debut on September 22 and at the end of the second week, according to Netflix, it was listed among the top 10 films in 69 countries.
Editi Effiong told the news media that, “Films are made for audiences, and the bigger the audience for a film, the better the chances of your message going out.”
The producer went on to say “The reality for us is that we made a film, made by Nigerians, funded by Nigerian money, go global.”
Since the 1990s, when Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, first gained notoriety with works like “Living in Bondage,” a thriller produced by Kunle Afolayan’s Anklápó that was released in 2022 and peaked at No. 1 on Netflix’s global list, Nollywood has become a worldwide sensation. With an average of 2,000 films released each year, it is the second-largest film industry in the world, behind India.
“The Black Book,” the newest blockbuster in Nollywood, cost $1 million to produce and was sponsored by a group of leaders and innovators in Nigeria’s digital sector. It is Effiong’s debut feature.
It chronicles Nigeria’s troubled past over a 40-year period, from the time when military administrations arbitrarily executed and imprisoned dissidents to the present when police violence and abuse of authority are still pervasive.
In the first scene of the movie, corrupt police officers working for powerful politicians assist in the kidnapping of the family members of the head of the Nigerian oil regulating agency.
In an effort to hide their actions, the police kill a young guy who has been identified as the kidnapping suspect, not realizing that he is the sole child of a former special agent who gave up his firearms for the pulpit.
At his peak, Nigeria’s “most dangerous man,” played by legendary Nigerian actor Richard Mofe-Damijo, was known as ex-officer-turned-pastor Paul Edima, who had a history marked by killings and involvement in a number of coups throughout West Africa.
After failing to persuade authorities that his kid is innocent, Edima is shown as a penitent father who has turned over a new leaf after being motivated by his favorite Bible verse 1 Corinthians 5:17.
In Nigeria, the problem of sluggish justice is not new. On Friday, a lot of people thought back to the terrible protests in 2020, when young Nigerians protesting police abuse were shot at and murdered. Rights organizations claim that many victims of police violence have still not received justice three years later.
Justice for his kid comes with a price for Edima. He pursues the perpetrators of his son’s murder one by one, eventually finding the army general who, ironically, was also his previous employer.
“It is a fictional narrative but this is what Nigeria was,” Effiong noted in his interview with the news media.
Nigeria, in his opinion, is not doing a good job of teaching its history in schools and enabling children to comprehend how the past of the nation has shaped the present.
Effiong stated, “A society must be changed positively by art, and so there was an orientation on our part to, through the film we are going to make, reflect on this issue (of police brutality).”
In 2020, Effiong participated in sessions of a government-commissioned panel of investigation into the protest shootings in Lagos, the capital and largest city of Nigeria. He also offered real-time updates via his profile on the social media network X, previously known as Twitter. The movie’s pre-production had already started at the same time.
“We must tell the truth in spite of the circumstances,” he said. “Justice is important for everyone: the people we like and the people we do not like — especially the people we do not like,” he noted.
The story of the film, according to some, is comparable to that of the American action thriller John Wick. It is an unexpectedly positive analogy that also attests to the popularity of the film, according to Effiong.
The film has also been praised for demonstrating the possibilities of the Nigerian and African film industries. According to a recent analysis from market intelligence company Digital TV Research, the continent’s SVOD industry is anticipated to have a healthy 18 million members, up from 8 million this year.
A representative for Netflix stated that the platform’s primary focus in sub-Saharan Africa continues to be providing enjoyment through local storytelling, “Africa has great talent and world-class creatives, and we are committed to investing in African content and telling African stories of every kind,” Netflix remarked in a statement.
According to Effiong, Nigeria’s film industry is at “the point right now where the world needs to take notice.”
He claimed that’s because “The Black Book is a film by Black people, Black actors, Black producers, Black money 100%, and it’s gone ahead to become a global blockbuster.”
