The Lost Okoroshi

Haunted by dreams of an ancestral Okoroshi masquerade, a disillusioned security guard wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a mute, purple spirit, in Abba Makama’s surrealist romp through the sprawling city of Lagos.

Jun 20: Intro by curator Fegor Obuwoma; screening followed by discussion between Fegor and Kika Memeh, writer/journalist/multimedia producer

Thinking through the displacement of cultural practices within city life, The Lost Okoroshi confronts critically and comically the severance of belief systems in contemporary Nigerian life. As Raymond undergoes a transition usually reserved for young Igbo boys, he is forced into emergence in a society without the language for understanding his entirety. Acting as a call back to understand the present and the future of post-colonial existence, Raymond’s journey reflects a city much obscured yet welcoming.

Fegor Obuwoma, Curator, to glimpse… African Cinema Now

Relentlessly surprising, The Lost Okoroshi smashes together bits of B-movie, slapstick, mumblecore, fable and surrealism in stark vignettes enlivened by a funky, synth-heavy soundtrack. Makama’s schizophrenic style is designed to provoke as much as to entertain. But at the heart of his madcap caper is a classic theme of postcolonial cinema: the battle between tradition and capitalist modernity, whose victims — society’s most vulnerable — are served neither by earthly powers nor gods.

Devika Girish, The New York Times

The Lost Okoroshi ultimately becomes a stranger and more ambivalent vision with every accumulated image and incident.

Brendan Boyle, Cinema Scope

Media Partner

Community Partner