In a modest home studio in Lagos, its walls a canvas of pastel scribbles and paint, Abba Makama contemplates the universal language of dreams and masquerades. This space is the creative nucleus for one of Nigeria’s most distinctive cinematic voices, a filmmaker whose work deliberately sidesteps the well-trodden paths of Nollywood to chart a course through the surreal, the satirical, and the spiritually curious.
Makama, an award-winning director, writer, and visual artist, has dedicated his career to interrogating Nigerian identity, not through broad melodrama, but through the peculiar and the personal, establishing himself as a custodian of a new, introspective wave of African storytelling.
Makama’s artistic foundation was poured in the vibrant, multi-ethnic setting of Jos, Plateau State. His childhood was marked by a profound fascination with the local masquerade festivals, where the donning of a costume signalled a transcendent transformation from man to spirit.
This early captivation with the thin veil between reality and the supernatural never left him, later fuelling his deep interest in the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Jung and the concept of a collective unconscious. Although he initially pursued business management at the State University of New York, his immersion in a community of art students and a comprehensive self-education in film history through his roommate’s collection catalysed a pivotal shift in purpose.
He would later formalise this passion with film studies at New York University before returning to Nigeria to begin his creative journey in earnest.His professional path is a testament to a consistent vision. Below is a timeline of the key milestones that have defined his career.
Key Milestones in Makama’s Career
· Early 2010s: Begins with satirical shorts like Direc-toh, critiquing the Nollywood system.
· 2015: Directs the documentary Nollywood: Something From Nothing for Al Jazeera, earning an African Movie Academy Award nomination.
· 2016: Co-founds the Surreal16 Collective with filmmakers C.J. Obasi and Michael Omonua, aiming to diversify Nigerian cinema. Releases debut feature Green White Green, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and winning Best Nigerian Film at AFRIFF.
· 2019: Sophomore feature The Lost Okoroshi premieres at TIFF. The film, exploring tradition through a man who transforms into a masquerade, streams globally on Netflix.
· 2021: Co-directs the anthology Juju Stories; his segment “Yam” contributes to the film winning the Boccalino d’Oro at the Locarno Film Festival.
· 2022-Present: Launches the S16 Film Festival to platform new African cinema. Releases documentary The Kids Are OK (2024) and is currently producing The Odyssey (2025), a documentary on Yoruba music history with Adekunle Gold.
The formation of the Surreal16 Collective in 2016 was a defining act of creative insurgency. Inspired by the DIY ethos of the Dogme 95 movement, Makama and his colleagues authored a sixteen-rule manifesto that rejected Nollywood clichés—from slapstick comedy to establishing shots of the Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge—in favour of genre experimentation and auteur-driven stories.
For Makama, the term “surreal” was less an artistic label and more a synonym for the freedom of the dreaming mind, a space where the ego sleeps and unfiltered creativity reigns. This philosophy is vividly animated in The Lost Okoroshi, a film that was born from his lifelong obsession with masquerades and reinforced by discovering strikingly similar “wild man” rituals in European pagan traditions, a visual proof of Jung’s theories that fascinated him.
Makama’s work is characterised by a deliberate and playful subversion of expectations. He approaches weighty themes—national identity in Green White Green, spiritual displacement in The Lost Okoroshi, urban youth culture in The Kids Are OK—through a lens of dark comedy and satire. He views humour not as mere entertainment but as a nuanced, critical tool for accessing and understanding the world.
His mission, as he describes it, is that of a “cultural ambassador,” using cinema to reintroduce Nigerians to the complexities of their own heritage, challenging demonised perceptions of tradition and making “being African cool again”.
Today, Makama’s ambitions continue to expand. Alongside nurturing new talent through the S16 Film Festival, he is completing The Odyssey, a documentary project that traces the century-long evolution of Yoruba music into the global Afrobeats phenomenon, produced in collaboration with musician Adekunle Gold.
This venture into music history underscores his foundational drive: to explore the deep, often subconscious, narratives that shape identity. From the dreamscapes of his paintings to the spiritual comedies of his films, Abba Makama’s legacy is that of an artist committed to mapping the rich, surreal, and endlessly fascinating terrain of the African psyche for audiences both at home and across the world.
