The 20 Best Nollywood Movies of All Time

This Twitter page is on a mission to preserve the legacy of Nollywood while sharing relatable, viral memes from the film genre's golden age.

We touched base with the creator of the @yungnollywoodaccount (who has requested to remain anonymous), to learn more about the inspiration behind the curation of the content that's made rounds on Twitter, as well as list what she thinks are the 20 best Nollywood films of all time.

The creator tells us that she was encouraged by her friends, who often call her by the nickname "Nollywood," to create a space online where she could post her own Nollywood musings, after she came across the nolly.babes Instagram account and submitted relevant content to the platform to no avail.

"I often posted about Nollywood on my personal page, but it never occurred to me that I could use social media as a platform for archiving," she says.

The page went live in February of this year and has gained 11,000 followers and counting with no social media strategy other than posting organic content. Using Twitter as the space to encapsulate Nollywood culture was intentional for the creator: to give nolly.babes their due space on Instagram, the ability to layout photos side-by-side or in groups and to engage with the wit of the Twitter community.

"I like to consume as much as I like to create and Twitter makes it easier for information to travel back and forth between us," she adds.

She also emphasizes that she's grown up with the genre since Nollywood began in 1992. It's been a key part of her upbringing in Nigeria, especially when it came to family bonding.

"As a child I spent a lot of my free time at home being creative and consuming different art forms: reading, watching television and listening to music. Since I didn't have many options other than what was around me, I found myself absorbing a lot of local subject matter," she says. "I remember one summer my aunt came to visit, and we always went back and forth to home movie rental kiosks [what Nollywood was referred to back then] in Ajah Market and we must have watched over 200 movies that summer."

Her parents owned classics including The Rich Also Cry and Diamond Ring, "and our dad owned every Nkem Owoh movie ever made, or at least an obscene amount of Nkem Owoh CDs," she adds.

The mind behind yungnollywood recalls being fascinated by the women in the film who looked liked her and has even developed her sense of style after them. "[They] were very glamourous, daring and feisty in a culture where strong women were seen as unwomanly," she says. "I've always had a thing for female villains."

The aficionado's goals for this platform are simple: to provide receipts that the film genre deserves its overdue accolades and to create a community for Nollywood fans all over the world.

"After the viral reaction to the first meme I posted, I realized that there was a huge demand for my style of content," she adds. "I kept on creating because I wanted to drown the belief that Nollywood was 'razz' or only one type of West African content was good enough to be considered art."

She continues:

"Hopefully I can continue to show that Nollywood is a legendary industry, something to be proud of and celebrated as Nigerians. I want everyone who contributed to the creation of these movies to be immortal, and if our platform can help, then that is satisfying enough because they changed my life."

Dig into the 20 best Nollywood movies of all time (thanks to the many YouTube pages keeping the flame alive), according to yungnollywood, below. This list is in no particular order.

OSUOFIA IN LONDON

Screenshot via Nigeria Movie Network.

We put this here because it's the most popular Nkem Owoh movie and it's the film that gave him his nickname. However, you should watch every Nkem Owoh movie you can find.

Here's part one, part two, and part three.