Every Thursday, a group of students from the University of Ibadan, the oldest in Nigeria, organizes a film club, transforming a small lecture hall into a political agora where they develop a critical voice. “Coconut Head Generation”, a scornful expression to designate a stubborn and brainless youth, takes on a whole new meaning when the students turn this stigma around to claim their freedom of thought.
Alain Kassandra takes us to the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest university, where a student film club — Thursday Film Series — tables critical conversations on corruption, gender roles, LGBTQ+ rights, colonialism and housing. Through an examination of how film affects the way we perceive the world, we follow these students as they struggle to make sense of their place in contemporary Nigeria while facing an oppressive university system that extends to a broader Nigerian context. We are thrust into a film that ask us to hope for a future in the face of the country’s many adversities.
Kika Memeh & Ogheneofegor Obuwoma, FOCUS Curators
Presented by
Tobi Akinde, Adeyosola Adeniran, Leye Komolafe, Deyo Adebiyi, Obayomi Anthony Ayodele, Adeyemi Olufunmilayo Adebimpe
France/Nigeria
2023
In English, French and Yoruba with English subtitles and open captions
Graphic violence
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Alain Kassanda, Emilie Guitard
Cinematography
Alain Kassanda, Tobi Akinde
Editor
Alain Kassanda
Alain Kassandra
Born in Kinshasa, DRC, Alain Kassanda moved to France at the age of eleven. After studying communication, he organized movie screenings in various Parisian theatres and eventually becoming a programmer of an art house cinema for five years. From 2015 to 2019, he relocated to Ibadan, Nigeria where he directed his first short film Trouble Sleep (winner of the Golden Dove at Dok Leipzig 2020). His first feature film, Colette & Justin was selected for the IDFA’s 2022 international competition. Coconut Head Generation is his third film.
Filmography: Colette & Justin (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al