Eyimofe / This Is My Desire

Primarily focused around the life of Nigerian electrician Eyimofe (Jude Akuwudike) in Lagos, Eyimofe comes home after a night shift to discover that his sister and all her children have died during the night, due to carbon monoxide poisoning. In one instant all of his hard-saved dreams of buying a visa to escape Lagos are torn apart. In quick succession, he loses his job, his rich father wants to steal his dead sister’s assets and it quickly emerges that, when it comes to life in Lagos, the fall towards poverty is a sharp, inverted descent.

…a sensitively-shot journey through Lagos’s skewed sense of opportunity.

With a slew of committed performances, couple with naturalistically-shot environments, ‘Eyimofe / This Is My Desire’ is a sensitively-shot journey through Lagos’s skewed sense of opportunity. Initially framed in the portrayal of Eyimofe’s quest for a visa, the movie also shows a similar desire for escape with Rosa (Temiloluwa Ami-Williams) who has promised the unborn child of her unwed sister for exit visas. With its realistically-sketched identity parade of money-orientated officials, unscrupulous families and opportunistic profiteers, prejudice and suspicion foreshadows every crack of daylight that enters into the shared universe of Eyimofe and Rosa. With its two engrossing storylines and realistic detail, this is a movie that will quietly bind you to its scrabbling outcomes.

In the end, everyone is using everyone else, and no matter what their position might be on the ladder out of Lagos, fate can hit you with the heaviest hand. With the unenviable realisation that most if not all of your prized possessions and positions may be forfeit, ‘Eyimofe’ is a movie that carries an appropriately abrupt ending for a dream that’s permanently out of reach.

If you want a sense of what life is really like in Lagos, then I’d recommend you walk for a couple of hours in Eyimofe’s shoes.