Nigeria

Aided by Tobi Bakre’s AMVCA Best Drama Actor-winning turn, director Loukman Ali and producer Jade Osiberu’s shot at telling a memorable story prioritizes spectacle over relationships.

A strong ensemble including Nse Ikpe-Etim and Nancy Isime, playing off a domineering leading performance by Chidi Mokeme, enhances Netflix’s intense limited series. But its grittiness can veer, avoidably and frustratingly, into violence porn.

Chidi Mokeme and Nse Ikpe-Etim were snubbed in a near shut-out of Netflix series Shanty Town, with Tobi Bakre scooping a shock Best Drama Actor victory as Brotherhood swept its categories. Perennial Best Comedy Actress champ Funke Akindele also lost for the first time in five years while Anikulapo won Best Overall Movie.

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad, the actress’ debut collection of stories, sold over 2,200 copies, assuring it the No. 1 spot on The Rovingheights Bestseller List: Presented with Open Country Mag. So why do these stories of failing romance connect so widely?

Alhaji Waziri Oshomah fused Highlife, local folk styles, and Western pop into songs of positivity in Auchi, Nigeria. When New York label Luaka Bop released The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah in its World Spirituality Classics series last year, we spoke to musician and label about his artistry.

In addition to literary and film stories on Open Country Mag, you can now also read stories in business, culture, and society from Folio Nigeria.

In the private space of family and the public space of Biafra, a significant new memoir asks questions of loss and longing. But will the answers be enough?

Despite characters that are not fully realized, and a convenient central dilemma, Dakore Egbuson-Akande and Nse Ikpe-Etim serve the strength of connection between women.

Since she erupted in The Meeting, playing against type as a hilariously antagonistic receptionist, the superstar has embodied complex women, including a soldier’s wife in ’76 and a bewitching singer in La Femme Anjola. Now, 25 years into her career, she is Nollywood’s most critically acclaimed actor, and Open Country Mag‘s first film cover star. Where does she draw from to inhabit these women?

In the 2000s, she was only another superstar in Nollywood. Now she is the most nominated actress in the histories of both the AMAAs and the AMVCAs, the industry’s two biggest awards. For Open Country Mag’s first film cover, we look into her reinvention from stage to screen, 25 years after she emerged on the scene.

Announcing the first formal bestseller list in Nigerian literature, covering fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s books, and self-published titles, with an overall Top 100.

With Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Trees, she helped herald LGBTQ visibility in Nigerian literature. With Harry Sylvester Bird, she still isn’t looking to satisfy society. “I think, sometimes, it takes time for people to digest what literature is really doing,” the literary icon says.

Seminal storyteller of queer love, satirist of race, literary icon.

Toyin Abraham is a vulnerable seer in Niyi Akinmolayan’s detailed depiction of spirituality and sports betting.

The brief feature, by director John Adekoje, works memory, spirituality, and pain. “That’s indicative of the growth women have access to now,” said AMAAs Best Actress winner Egbuson, “to process our pain and become stronger, and transform, ascend.”