Nigeria and France / 2021 / 84mins / Drama / Magic Realism / English and Pidgin

Juju Stories explores juju in contemporary Lagos through three stories. In “Love Potion,” by Omonua, an unmarried woman agrees to use juju to find herself an ideal mate. In “Yam,” by Makama, consequences arise when a street urchin picks up seemingly discarded money from the roadside. In “Suffer the Witch,” by Obasi, love and friendship turn into obsession when a young college woman attracts her crush’s interest.

Abba Makama

Abba T. Makama is an award-winning filmmaker and the founder and creative director of OSIRIS. He has a degree in Business Management from the State University of New York, Fredonia, and studied film at New York University. In May 2014, he was commissioned by Al Jazeera to direct a documentary on the Nigerian film industry. The documentary, titled Nollywood: Something From Nothing, was broadcast in July 2015 on Al Jazeera World and was nominated for best documentary film at the 2016 AMAA (African Movie Academy Awards). His feature film, Green White Green, has screened at over 17 international film festivals and won Best Nigerian Film at AFRIFF 2016. Abba is also an alumni of Berlinale Talents 2018. His sophomore feature, The Lost Okoroshi, premiered at TIFF, followed by screenings at BFI London 2019 and Berlin Critics Week in 2020. He is a painter and an art enthusiast, and has a deep interest in Freudian and Jungian psychologies. Learn More

C.J. Obasi

C.J. “Fiery” Obasi made his debut feature – a zero budget film Ojuju, which premiered at the Africa International Film Festival in November 2014, where it won the award for Best Nigerian Film and went on to screen at other festivals around the world, garnering universal acclaim despite its zero budget status. Obasi’s sophomore effort is the feature film O-Town, a crime thriller epic piece, which he calls his “Western in an Eastern land,” which won and was nominated for many awards. Through his production company, Fiery Film, he acquired the rights to Hello, Moto a short story based on the book by acclaimed Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, which resulted in the short film, Hello, Rain. The film had its world premiere at the Oscar-qualifying International Competition of the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen in May 2018, and has gone on to screen at over 30 festivals, including the Fantasia Film Festival, where it won the Special Mention of the Jury prize, and the BFI London Film Festival, where it was a nominee for Best Short Film. In 2019, Obasi served as a jury member at the Durban International Film Festival. His third feature, Mami Wata, is a female-driven black and white fantasy film developed with Ouaga Film Lab, Less is More, EAVE, and Durban FilmMart. Learn More

Michael Gouken Omonua

Michael Omonua is a writer/director who became passionate about cinema during film studies classes in secondary school. He received his BA in Film Production at the University College of the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey. He has since gone on to write and direct eleven short films in both England and Nigeria, many of which have screened at a number of festivals and exhibitions, including Made in Nollywood (Bordeaux), London Short Film Festival, and Africa International Film Festival, and has had a film (Talk) selected for Vimeo Staff Picks. His short, Brood was screened at the 2018 Rotterdam International Film Festival. Omonua served as director of photography on Abba T. Makama's The Lost Okoroshi, which had its world premiere at TIFF 2019. His debut feature, The Man Who Cuts Tattoos, had its world premiere at BFI's London Film Festival in 2019. His 2021 short, Rehearsal, was in competition at Berlinale Shorts 2021. His influences include the humanist cinema of Ray, Ozu, and Bresson and the experimentation of French New Wave directors. Learn More