Cameroonian filmmaker Frank Thierry Léa Malle’s L’Accord/The Agreement follows the story of Flora Mebwoua at a pivotal yet painful juncture in her young life. Set in Cameroon’s capital city Yaoundé, the film portrays the Mebwouas complicated struggle for justice in the face of poverty and powerful political figures in the wake of Flora’s mysterious assault. Through a series of flashbacks anchored in the present, we witness her journey with young love, grief, and great expectations as the details of her assault are slowly uncovered. 

Set in Enugu, a mostly rural state in Southeast Nigeria, Dika Ofoma’s short film A Quiet Monday depicts the modest but industrious life of siblings Kamnonu and Obgonna. Now orphaned, the pair rely largely on Kamnonu’s tailoring talents to make ends meet. When a wealthy client presents Kamnonu with the opportunity to attract more eyes to her designs, not even the Monday sit-at-home restrictions will stop her from delivering. 

In this retrospective conversation on the 31st New York African Film Festival, Thierry Léa Malle and Ofoma offer insight into their creative processes, themes of class tensions and political unrest in their work, and their films’ unique portrayals of African families.

Conversation with Frank Thierry Léa Malle

Chyna Cassell: In both films, the lives of the wealthy and poor are juxtaposed. Can you speak to how establishing clear class distinctions between characters was integral in the overarching narratives of your films?

Frank Thierry Léa Malle: I had to paint the differences in society with my themes. For me, it was important to show on one side the poor and rich, that wealth does not determine the morality of the person. So we have the father of Flora who is poor but has his morality, and the mother [of Cédric] on the other side, who is rich. We used the settings, the wardrobe, also some details of the location, and even the colors, because if you see the colors are stronger in the rich house than in the poor house. When the electricity goes off, you have lamps, traditional petrol lamps. On the other side, you have the generator that starts. So all these things were mise-en-scène that we used to make a difference. 

Cassell: Those elements were very strong and very well-conveyed. I also want to discuss how political unrest and corruption in local and national governments inhibit the individual’s autonomy. So Flora, for example, has ambitions of attending university–how did you use the young female protagonist, Flora, to demonstrate those larger structural issues that affect the whole society? 

Thierry Léa Malle: The story of Flora helps us to understand the society of Cameroon. Because Flora is poor, she has a health issue. The justice [system] is more concerned about bringing people to prison than helping. I mean, the government could have helped her with the emergency but the government representative who comes is more concerned about the legal aspects of it. And this is how the things have been portrayed. Also, Flora wants to go to university but her family is poor and they prefer that she not attend university because they don’t have enough money. They want her to do more practical things. You see, her mother sells fish, and her father is a driver. Both parents have to work for them to survive. Flora covers all the issues plaguing our society: poverty, medical problems, all these things. Flora is just, let’s say, an allegory. The life of Flora is an allegory for the condition of people in my country.

Cassell: Your film is set in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. What opportunities and insights did shooting in the capital provide? What did the location offer to the film and how did it help you tell the story? 

Thierry Léa Malle: I wrote a story about Yaoundé. Yaoundé is the capital of my country. And it’s an allegory for the whole country, actually. You have neighborhoods that are well-constructed and you have other neighborhoods that are very poor. And the capital was also a character because it’s important to see that the setting itself is a character. It was a gift because we had to go to people. Some people were reliable in that we could work with them but some people didn’t want us to shoot their houses. But we managed to have some people that were great enough to give us their places. So we shot in real locations, with no construction. We were happy for that. 

Cassell: One of my favorite moments of the film was when the mother of Flora’s boyfriend Cédric–along with the whole family–comes to Flora’s home. You see her in her very fine clothes, and she is walking in heels over the makeshift bridge in an impoverished area of Yaoundé. It was a moment that merged the two distinct realities they were living. As you said, an allegory for the two realities of people in the same city. 

Thierry Léa Malle: She wants to be mayor and she has a conflict: she wants to destroy poor quarters to make better living conditions for people, that’s what she says, but she has never been to these types of places. And she’s forced to be there because she’s trying to look for a solution for her child. 

Cassell: It’s a really great story. What were some of the challenges that you were up against during the process of filming and how did you confront and overcome them? 

Thierry Léa Malle: The main problem we have in Africa making films is funds. I’m on a film [set] now and I’m having difficulties getting funds to make the film. It’s always funds. The other thing, as I said earlier, was location. People are not very eager to give their homes to us.

Another difficulty is that we don’t have enough equipment here in Africa. It’s difficult. We should. And the other thing is that we don’t have many trained and qualified technicians in all the domains of filmmaking. And, I mean, we try the best we can. This is why we focus on the story and the acting. All the difficulties are the things that make it more interesting to work. It’s how we come across this difficulty and we go for telling the stories. So we’re having a difficulty that everyone has. But it’s either [confront] them and make a film, or we stay back and complain. I don’t want to complain. I think we can do the best we can with what we have and seek better solutions. We can just work on the means to make things better. 

Cassell: I completely agree. And I think that in most scenarios, art will persist if you are persistent with telling the story. I’d like to shift gears to talk about the role of family in the film. We see Flora in the context of her family and we see the desires and expectations they have for her. What role does family play in the story that you’re telling in L’Accord?

Thierry Léa Malle: Yes, the family is an African family. And once you go to school, once you’re the person that [received the highest degree] in our families, you’re the person with whom hope is more concerned. And she’s one girl with two boys. Normally, her brothers would be more loved than her. The bond of the family is very strong. And Flora represents the hopes of the whole family; they are all waiting for her. They are waiting for her to go to school, make a better life, and bring the family with her. At one point, her father even said, “You’re the one who will bring me out of poverty.” It’s normal that they are concerned about her case. 

Cassell: Is there a reason you decided to focus on Flora instead of having her brothers be the ones who rescue the family from poverty or have the most hope placed on them? Because you’re right: [the latter] is typical in African families, especially for the older brothers.

Thierry Léa Malle: Because it’s common in families that the junior one is the one who bears all the hopes of the family. It happens. My concern about Flora was she’s the starting point, but she’s not the real story. The real conflict is between her parents who both want the best for their family, but one has pride (Flora’s father) and the other wants to think out of the box (Flora’s mother). Her mother wants revenge for her daughter, she wants justice for her daughter. She thinks that they’ve suffered enough and that if somebody, even if the person comes from a wealthy background, can help them to do better, maybe they should think about going with that option. 

Cassell: As we reflect on the Festival, though you couldn’t attend in person, how did presenting your film to an international audience at the New York African Film Festival expand conversations your film set out to address? 

Thierry Léa Malle: We are always proud when our films go to other people because we make films not just for the people in our country. When you want to make a film, you want to tell a story, but you want the story to have resonance all over the world and it’s great. The first time the film was screened, people there did not understand French but they tried to understand the film. Getting the film to New York was important to me because, since my first movie, I’ve been trying to come to the Festival but [my film] wasn’t selected. As a filmmaker, you need to tell your story for your people. We need the story to have a worldwide resonance. And I was happy that the film was there. I hope people enjoyed it. I want to believe people enjoy it. It’s important for me because as a filmmaker, I want to say something, but mostly when I say something, I want people to actually get it and hear what I’m shouting about.

Cassell: I enjoyed it a lot. I know you’re currently shooting, so can you tell us what’s next for you? Are there any projects we can expect to look out for from you in the future? 

Thierry Léa Malle: I’ve done two drama films and now I want to make a comedy. Not that the subjects are not serious, because they are. I wanted to have comedic relief and make a more accessible film. I think comedy calls the public more. It was important for me because I had so much drama, and [so many personal] issues these last few years. I lost my father. I had so many issues. I just wanted to laugh and share my laughter with other people, which is why it was important to do a comedy. So I’m working on a comedy now. 

To keep up with Frank Thierry Léa Malle’s upcoming projects, follow him on Instagram.

Conversation with Dika Ofoma

Cassell: So in A Quiet Monday, the lives of the wealthy and poor are juxtaposed. Can you speak to how establishing those clear class distinctions between the characters was integral in the overarching narratives of your film?

Dika Ofoma: So when I was thinking of A Quiet Monday, I remember thinking, because the film is a reflection [on] something that was happening–I use was in the past tense because there are no longer government-controlled curfews due to the agitations of the secessionist group. In 2021, 2022, when people around these communities couldn’t go out on Mondays, the greatest discomfort that it cost me was that I couldn’t go. I couldn’t order food from my favorite restaurant. I couldn’t. Yeah, that was mostly discomfort because I’m introverted, so I’m mostly at home. But also my nieces and nephews who are in primary school couldn’t go to school. And I think that was the biggest discomfort if [speaking] about my family. But then I imagined for those in rural areas, in villages who do not live in the cities around the Southeast [of Nigeria]; it’s more difficult because these guys hold them hostage in the sense that they have to go out [for work] every day to survive. They are either into petty trading, or they are seamstresses or tailors like Kamnonu in the story where they have urgent deliveries to make. And I just understood that for them, especially economically, it would affect their lives more. And then for the woman [in the film] coming from Abuja, you know, she’s coming from the city and she’s traveling to the US. I think for her, discomfort would probably be that she wouldn’t be able to get the outfit that she wanted made for her on that day. But for someone like Kamnonu, part of her urgency to have the outfit delivered is the money to feed her and her brother Ogbonna for that day, even though that wasn’t pronounced in the film. But we see how wealth or social class secludes one from social ills like this and it’s usually people who are at the bottom of the food chain or are working class who are adversely affected by things like this. And that is what I wanted to show: that it’s the everyday people, the people who do not have the means, who are mostly affected by the outcomes of situations like the sit-at-home mandate in the southeastern part of Nigeria. 

Cassell: This film was beautiful aesthetically but its content was also very compelling. Your words contextualize it. It’s a film that demands to be rewatched because there’s also history and politics at play that are not automatically evident to people who aren’t in the country or the region or aren’t well-researched on this topic. 

Ofoma: Even for a lot of Nigerians; it’s not just people outside the country. Even Nigerians, especially from regions that do not have strong connections to the Southeast or Igbo people, a lot of people do not know about it. I remember screening in Lagos, and people were surprised and asked me if this would really happen in the Southeast. It’s also underreported, and so a lot of people do not know about it. Some Igbo people who did not live around the Southeast did not know about it until they saw the film. And then I would have to inform them, educate them on it. 

Cassell: It’s amazing what film can do. You kind of touched on it. The film has political unrest, and there’s corruption in both local and national governments that inhibit the individual’s autonomy. The protagonist Kamnonu, she wants to transcend poverty or at least survive it by using her sewing capabilities. How did you demonstrate some of those larger structural issues that affect everyone in society by way of this young female character’s story? 

Ofoma: With Kamnonu, when I was writing her, I was thinking, ‘Who is this person?’ There’s a line where she talks about how she could have made a better wedding dress for the bride and how she’s underlooked in the community because she didn’t train in the city. And so if you’re familiar with the southeast, there are a lot of cultural nuances. She talked about somebody who had gone to training in Aba. Aba is a city in Nigeria where a lot of people who want to be tailors or designers go to train. But because she doesn’t have training in a city like that, she’s looked down upon in her rural community. So when this woman who’s come from a big city takes an interest in her, it has essentially provided her an opportunity to prove herself. It gives her zeal towards what she’s doing; she’s able to brave the Monday restrictions just to get this woman’s outfit to her. You know, it’s that opportunity that has been provided for her to prove herself. What is revealed through Kamnonu’s character is that for people in communities like [Enugu] who do not have governmental support or private sectors investing in their talents, there’s no opportunity to scale up. Also, it inspires rules around migration around the country–if your talent is going to be valued, whatever it is you’re doing, you need to find yourself in big cities, Lagos or Abuja. That was my intention in mentioning Aba, how Kamnonu feels about not having trained in a big city. Now this opportunity presents itself and she’s willing to go the extra mile just to prove herself and to prove her talent. 

Cassell: The film is set in Enugu, a rural area in the southeast of Nigeria–what gifts or opportunities did filming in this location provide you and how did it enable you to tell the story that you set out to tell? 

Ofoma: We shot in communities in Enugu. It would have been difficult to achieve what we did in the number of days we achieved it if we were trying to shoot in a big city like Lagos. It would have been just a lot more difficult. But we had the communities from the markets we shot in to the streets we shot in; we had a welcoming community. The people were open to having us make the film in their community and I think that enabled us. This was an enabling environment because usually in other cities, you would have people come tax you for shooting on the street and all of that. We didn’t have those inhibitions. It was just straight: we had our camera pointed and there was no trouble. We actually got a lot of support from even the markets we shot in and they were willing to be extras for us. That also saved us costs. People were just happy to help us out with the film.

Cassell: That’s amazing, saving money too because it can be a very expensive process. On the other hand, were there any challenges throughout filming, and how did you confront those? 

Ofoma: Yeah, so when we shot this, we were looking to shoot in 2022 and this was still when the Southeast was under these restrictions on Monday…I heard reports of people who had gone to shoot on a Monday and then they were attacked [by the secessionist groups] and production had to stop. Most of the crew, the heads of departments, came in from Lagos. One of the cinematographers we wanted to work with advised us not to shoot it in the Southeast and to look for other regions of the country to recreate what was going on in the Southeast for safety and peace. But it wouldn’t have felt as authentic if we shot anywhere else. And so part of it was that we had to delay because we were trying to find crew members who could brave coming to the Southeast to shoot. Casting was an issue too, especially for the character Callistus who was a member of the secessionist group. I went to three or four actors and they just would say no, they wouldn’t. They were afraid. They felt they would come after them. They felt I was depicting the group negatively, even though the film was really about how this thing is counterproductive and how it’s affecting everyday people. But a lot of the actors we wanted were saying no. When we finally went to the person we went with, Daniel Ngozika, who’s a friend of mine, I had to just sweet talk him into it and convince him that, ‘Yeah, this is what we do for the arts, we all need to be brave.’ And then he agreed eventually. But, yeah, casting was an issue. Convincing crew members to come to Enugu to shoot in 2022 was difficult. We kept shifting our dates until we eventually shot in mid-January 2023. That was the challenge. 

Cassell: Wow. All the more congratulations on facing those obstacles because that is a crucial part of the process. Talking about the role that family plays in the film, how did depicting that brother and sister relationship contribute to the narrative? 

Ofoma: Because it is a political film, I thought about what would be the heart and soul of the film and what would get the audience invested. I thought about my siblings and the relationship I have with them. I asked myself, ‘Why don’t I use this as an opportunity to reflect on love between siblings and how siblings care for each other?’ So I have these orphans who have been there for each other since their parents passed and are just loving each other and protecting each other. I was thinking what would be the heart and soul of the film and yeah, we can have politics. We can have the history of Nigeria and Biafra. We can have those discussions. But also, we want to show a lovely brother-sister relationship. That’s what inspired [the story of] Kamnonu and Obgonna from the very beginning. 

Cassell: It was very touching. 

Ofoma: Thank you. 

Cassell: It was a great foil to the reality that they had to face outside that was very hard. It was very effective in grounding the film and making the characters feel human because sometimes when the conditions are so bad, that almost dehumanizes the characters. 

So as we reflect on the festival, even though you sadly weren’t able to attend in person, how did presenting your film to an international audience at the New York African Film Festival expand the conversations you set out to address?

Ofoma: I’ve been a fan of the Festival. I remember the first time I ever read a review about Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, it was on the New York African Film Festival website. And it just echoed my thoughts about the film. Having it screened there was almost like, ‘Yes!’ You know, one of my biggest inspirations, his films have been screened here and then my film is screening here two years later. It feels like a big win for me and I was excited about it. But also I know that there are strong Nigerian communities in the United States. We have a strong diaspora now. So when you’re thinking of making films, you’re not only making them for Nigerians who are in Nigeria, there are Nigerians in New York. I had a friend who was in New York also see the film. Two friends, actually. My friend Kemi just messaged me about a week or two ago that she saw my film and she forgot to message me prior. For me, that’s exciting. This opportunity to bring it home to Nigerians wherever they are, that’s what the Festival did for me. Especially with migration patterns now we just have a lot of Nigerians leaving the country, setting up families in the US, the UK, and Canada, et cetera. And so wherever they are, they also deserve to see these films. And of course, an international audience that is not Nigerian also can benefit from the experience. But I’m also happy that despite not being home in Nigeria, they’ve also found homes in cities across the world; we can take our art to them and they can also recall what it feels like to be home and reflect on it. That’s what the Festival enabled me to do. And thank you to the Festival, I really appreciate it. 

Cassell: I’m glad to have the opportunity to speak with you and learn more about the film. So, what is next for you? Are there any upcoming projects that we can keep an eye out for? 

Ofoma: So I’m just rounding up post-production on my film, God’s Wife. It’s also set in a rural community in the Southeast. It discusses widowhood practices there and some of the challenges widows face, especially when they’re misfortunate to have in-laws who do not like them or care for them. [It tackles] the difficulties widows in Nigeria face but also brings it home to the Igbo community and [shows] how what we call culture today, some of it has colonial roots. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to show with this film, just the ills of our society and hopefully demand recourse with these films. Hopefully it also shows at the Festival.
To stay up-to-date on Dika Ofoma’s work, you can follow him on Instagram and Twitter.