I had first heard of Mother of George right when I was first "getting into movies", aka I had just seen Drive and Fight Club for the first time and thought them life-changing (to be fair, I still really love both). I'm not sure how it happened, but I stumbled onto this film during that period and assumed this was well-known and well-regarded. It looked much more mature than what I was watching at the time, so I held it off in favor of more immediately-rewarding films.

Now coming back to it I can't believe it's been seen by under a thousand people on both the IMDb and LBD sites. Directed by Andrew Dosunmu, you can really feel his roots…

"Our prayers have been answered"

Adenike (Danai Gurira) is the happiest she could be after marrying Ayodele (Isaach de Bankole), the man she loves. Things are going great but as time passes and she has trouble becoming pregnant, cultural expectations begin creating an unbearable amount of pressure for her to find a way. The solution she eventually turns to in desperation may just tear her marriage apart and cost her everything. 

This is just one of those films I couldn't get on the wavelength of. There's some interesting commentary about the unfair amount of blame that falls on women when there's trouble conceiving a child and the shame culture surrounding it. Gurira and de Bankole turn in outstanding performances and…

🇳🇬Nigerian Film Week: 5th movie.

Visually slick and witty, it starts like a lovely and charming story, giving a dive into the power that culture holds in immigrant life, but quickly weaponizes its own charm to criticize the said culture and how it treats women.

'Mother of George' dives deep enough into all of the aspects of a Nigerian experience it wants to tackle to be engaging, but sometimes stays in certain zones a bit longer than it needs to. While the story is powerful and the characters are all understandable and are nice to follow, the circling in the same place for 106 minutes can get very exhausting. The desperation for childbirth because of cultural beliefs is choking the…

Mother of George is a Nigerian drama directed by Andrew Dosunmu and stars Isaach de Bankolé as well as Danai Gurira (from "The Walking Dead"). It premiered at Sundance Film Festival last year and received Cinematography Award: U.S. Dramatic for Bradford Young's contribution to this film as well as "Ain't Them Bodies Saints". This is a domestic drama centered around a family of immigrants from Nigeria living in New York City. It opens with a traditional wedding ceremony of Adenike and Ayodele, attended by many of their relatives and people of the community. A lush, exotic and fascinating blend of colors, costumes and traditions. It is one of the most richly photographed and depicted wedding sequences that you will see.…

One of those films in which there is a constant struggle between story and style.

I must say I was well on my way to really liking this. The beginning of the film set up some pretty involving drama along with some small bursts of style. I dug the characters, and was interested to see where things would end up.

It still is worth a watch, but the second half of the film is overrun by style choices that have to at the very least be questioned. While moments in the first half acted as a showcase of how to mix drama and style, things get a bit out of control in the second half. Not only do I question…

Visually, this is just something else. I'm completely in love with how the colors work here - they seem to talk to each other. Cinematographer is a true genius. That yellow color is just incredible: it permeates every frame, shimmers on traditional Nigerian fabrics, creates a feeling of celebration but also some kind of stuffiness at the same time. The camera perfectly follows the narrative - those close-ups of characters' faces, unusual angles, the play of light and shadow...

And the outfits! They're absolutely incredible. The characters look like they stepped out of a drawing or a painting - those vibrant, rich fabrics, traditional headpieces, every detail of the costume is thought through to perfection.

The plot... well, honestly, not…