By Nicole Veneto

Mami Wata beautifully cracks open a world Western eyes either blatantly ignore or seldom get to experience on screen.

Mami Wata is now playing in select theaters outside of New England. It will be screening at the SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, on October 23 and at the Vermont International Film Festival on October 26.

Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen) in C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi’s Mami Wata. Photo credit: Lílis Soares and Dekanalog Releasing)

DISCLAIMER: This review was published during the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023. The work being critiqued would not exist without the labor of actors.

One of the most beautiful things about cinema and the cinematic medium is its ability to introduce audiences to different worlds, cultures, and ways of living. For an hour and a half or more, we are asked to leave our own lives behind and immerse ourselves in stories that hail from different corners of the world, each with their own sets of traditions, beliefs, and understandings of the universe that we are all a part of. This is partly what makes world cinema so valuable; the only thing it asks of us is to open ourselves to new perspectives by reading the subtitles. Unfortunately, for many, particularly those people unwilling to leave the safety blanket comfort of Hollywood blockbusters and IP fodder, this is too high an asking price. The growing demand for more diversity and multiculturalism in big-budget American cinema is undercut by the frustrating unwillingness of the public to engage with foreign films the way it will line up to see Barbie or the latest stale superhero offering.

Thus the need to get the word out about films such as Mami Wata, a Nigerian co-production directed by C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi (Ojuju, Hello Rain). It is one of the most gorgeous looking films you’ll see all year. Entrenched in West African folklore and imbued with a distinctly witchy atmosphere, Mami Wata is a modern fable that dramatizes the tension between tradition and modernity and feminine versus masculine power, pitting the insidious forces of Western imperialism against indigenous faith in higher powers and forces that be. Much like last year’s Neptune Frost, Obasi’s latest feature beautifully cracks open a world Western eyes either blatantly ignore or seldom get to experience on screen.

As the opening title crawl explains against the sound of crashing waves, the isolated village of Iyi worships the sea goddess Mami Wata and maintains a matriarchal system of power. There are no schools, no hospitals, no institutions characteristic of a 21st-century society. But there is also no need for an army or police. There is no hunger and no poverty. In Iyi, the Intermediary (or village shaman) Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) works on behalf of Mami Wata to provide villagers with everything they need to live a peaceful life uncorrupted by modern (i.e., capitalistic and Western imperialist) decadence. But Mama Efe’s miracle daughter and direct heir to her position, Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh of MTV Shuga), is grappling with a crisis of faith: she steals Efe’s totem and runs off to the shore, frustrated because she can’t invoke Mami Wata’s powers. Meanwhile, Mama Efe’s adopted daughter and faithful assistant Prisca (a commanding Evelyne Ily Juhen, Saloum) struggles with her own beliefs after a village boy dies while receiving Mama Efe’s care. A small but vocal population of village men similarly question Mama Efe’s abilities to commune with the sea goddess, critical of her unwillingness to modernize Iyi like its surrounding villages, citing the aforementioned death of the boy as proof that “She no longer has any power.”

This is when rebel fighter Jasper (Emeka Amakeze) washes up on shore and is saved by Prisca and Mama Efe. They welcome him into their home and show him their hospitality, but Jasper’s arrival ends up as a catalyst for a patriarchal uprising among the village’s nonbelievers. Mama Efe is killed in the process. Under Jasper’s cruel and ruthless leadership, the rebels promise Iyi’s villagers modern institutions and infrastructure in exchange for their valuables and rescission of faith in Mami Wata’s power. But, as to be expected, vague promises of “progress” from outsiders become the means for them to enrich themselves. Their wealth is partly used to buy weapons that violently back up their authority. In order to save Iyi from ruin, the exiled Prisca and Zinwe are forced to confront their own beliefs in Mami Wata. They team up, under the unassailable bond of sisterhood, to fight against Jasper’s forces.

The most striking thing about Mami Wata is undeniably Lílis Soares’s lush black-and-white cinematography, for which she deservedly received the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography at Sundance. The stunning contrasts between darkness and light in her artfully composed shots lends a notably noir-esque feel to Obasi’s fable of modernity versus tradition. Contrasted with the actors’ dark skin, the streaks of white paint that mark their faces glow as if they are under blacklight. Sometimes the camera moves with a cinema verité purpose of action. Other times, as if it were creating a painting, it stays locked down on a scene to capture the beautiful composition of actors against dense foliage and the ocean shore. Even the costuming works in favor of Soares’s cinematography, with traditional Nigerian dress featuring bold, intricate patterns that likewise jump right off of the screen. And how Soares photographs the film’s numerous night scenes merits special praise, considering how many higher budgeted productions (including those with Hollywood funding) somehow manage to obscure what’s happening on screen as badly as shoddy day-for-night in your run-of-the mill Z-movie on Tubi.

African films remain some of the most undervalued, underappreciated, and underseen of world cinema, even among self-proclaimed cinephiles. Let’s hope a Nigerian feature like Mami Wata, which is so enmeshed in the specificity of the country’s culture and traditions, will gain traction among Western audiences who will be able to relate to the film’s anticolonialist and feminist-coded themes. The truth is, Mami Wata represents only a tiny fraction of what the country’s cinema has to offer. May this memorable Nigerian effort arouse our curiosity; there are many more deeply creative and eclectic African films that deserve our attention.

Nicole Veneto graduated from Brandeis University with an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, concentrating on feminist media studies. Her writing has been featured in MAI Feminism & Visual Culture, Film Matters Magazine, and Boston University’s Hoochie Reader. She’s the co-host of the podcast Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema. You can follow her on Letterboxd and her podcast on Twitter @MarvelousDeath.