Synopsis: “When will you come home?” Timinepre’s mother asks. Little does she know that Timinepre had fled Nigeria to seek asylum in the UK. They cannot return home for another 5 years. To explain the series of events that lead them here, would mean coming out to their mother as a lesbian and admitting that they left the country for fear of persecution. With Nigerian queer history erased from the national narrative of Nigeria, Queer Nigerians in the UK gather to tell their stories, documenting their experiences so that they can never be erased again.
About the Filmmaker: From Nigeria to England, Simisolaoluwa Akande’s fascination with the art of storytelling crossed continents before expressing itself through film. Now a multi-award-winning filmmaker her films embrace a deeply collaborative approach to storytelling that provides black stories the space to be told and retold.
Simisolaoluwa works within the experimental documentary genre. Her experimental film, Dudu, which explores the destabilizing effects of colorism through spoken word and poetic images, took home the 2021 BFI Future Film Festival award for Best Experimental Film. Her 2019 autobiographical documentary, Ojumo Ti Mo, delves into the immense gravity of grief and its effects on her family captured over a series of phone conversations. Ojumo Ti Mo won the 2020 BFIxWe Are Parables film competition, now published on the BFI Player. The film was also awarded the 2021 Waterspirite award for Best Documentary and Film of the Year and was further selected as a competition film at the London Short Film Festival 2022.
Screening Times:
This film is showing in the LGBTQ+ Shorts screening at The Forum Auditorium on 12th November at 17:00.
This screening will also include a Q&A with selected filmmakers.
Did you know that 100+ short films from our Official Selection will be available to rent online during this year's festival?
Selected films from the LGBTQ+ Shorts strand will be available online from 13th November until 3rd December.
Please note that some films are excluded from online screenings at the filmmaker's request. > More information