Nigerian Director Daniel Oriahi on Finding Comfort in Darkness

Oriahi has always kept his films grounded with the human element regardless of how adventurous the plot twists tend to be. He is particularly interested in relationships; not just the sweet and the savory, but the messiness and contradictions embedded within.

TheWeekend, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June and is headed for Nigerian theaters from August 30, balances plenty of Oriahi’s interests. The film has doses of emotional stakes invested in the relationships between the characters, but there is plenty of gory spectacle —in this case, cannibalism — to satisfy genre fans as well.

Oriahi spoke to OkayAfrica about finding comfort in the darkness, blending genres and making one of the year's most enjoyable films.

The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

OkayAfrica: You joined TheWeekend much later in its life cycle. How did you became attached?

Daniel Oriahi: I had worked on Sylvia, wth producer Uche Okocha of Trino Motion Pictures, and we always went back and forth on what we could do together next. Nothing clicked until he came to me with this one, which I only felt compelled to look at because he said it was a horror script. They’d had setbacks with a previous director and already had a date for shooting, but I was intrigued. He sent the draft that the previous director had developed, and I could see that it was overly ambitious but I felt it wasn’t as intimate as I liked. Over time, because I have spent quite a while shooting in Nigeria, I know instinctively what is feasible, even with a budget in place.

I made my comments and Uche immediately sent me the original draft written by Vanessa Kanu, who, incidentally, also wrote Sylvia. This one had more of what I was looking for. I worked with the writer Freddy O. Anyaegbunam Jr, who had worked with the previous director on a rewrite. We started shooting in late November 2022 into December, then we had a setback with production when the sound designer had some personal challenges. This stalled the project but it gave us time to review and assess what we had cut. Interestingly, we submitted a work in progress to Tribeca and were accepted.

You mentioned the horror element, but what else about the script made this the right project for you at this time?

Personally speaking, it was the relationship dynamics also; that toll of being in a relationship and choosing what information to share. I say that I am a child of trauma, and I mean it in the sense that I went into film as a form of therapy. My first film Misfit was a way of releasing myself from my demons growing up. I was a juvenile delinquent. I always ask myself, how does this story connect to me in my present state? I liked the cannibalism aspect of The Weekend, and how ambitious it was. But honestly, I was less connected to that. Cannibalism has been done by Giallo cinema during the ‘70s and ‘80s. I was worried about the practicality of making it believable for the screen, especially for where we are as an industry. I did not necessarily spend so much time on the gore because I wanted audiences to relate to it subconsciously.

The relationship aspect of The Weekend is credible and makes the cannibalism stuff even more interesting…

Talk a bit more about the childhood trauma that linked you to filmmaking as therapy.

I went through a psychotic disorder in my mid-20s and that was a massive turning point for me. I decided to become a filmmaker after recovering from that. I always wanted to express myself, but I didn’t have a purpose. I had a challenge of identity and that brought on some epiphany. I was not in an environment to access therapy or the right kind of help, so I had to start confronting my past through the only tool that I had, which is film. But I was doing this subconsciously and it was later I realized what was going on. When I had my experience, I felt I was trapped inside my own head. I also have relationship trauma and these feelings defined how I approached life afterwards.

Even though Sylvia is your last credited major film, you had still been creating other work?

I realized that I did not want to do anything else with my life. I have friends who are privileged to have another means of making a livelihood. For me, I am either teaching or doing something in the film space. For a while, I was making a lot of online stuff, streaming stuff because I am a filmmaker, right? But when I get the opportunity to do the big ones like The Weekend, I am excited even though they are few and far between. From Sylvia to TheWeekend, for instance, has taken about seven years. I do a lot of planning. Unfortunately with most projects, one doesn’t have that enthusiasm because they don’t really speak to you. But when you find one that does, you go all out. It sounds like I am shortchanging some projects but that is the honest truth.

I ask this question only because the film has had some international exposure – how do you respond to concerns that it perpetuates the stereotype that Africans are cannibals?

I didn’t think about that. People need to study how cinema has explored cannibalism, and they will see that it isn't necessarily tied to a specific tribe, region or race. Raw is a French film. There is more subtext to what you are watching, which is how young people question the ideology of the older generation. If that discourse comes up, I am not in control of that, but I look at it as a plus for the film as I consider it an intellectual one. We aren’t glorifying cannibalism but highlighting the personal struggles of the characters.