Nigeria is in an economic recession, but you would never know it from speaking to Daniel Emeke Oriahi, whose workload remains steady following the release of Taxi Driver (Oko Ashewo) (2016). The director’s break-out film has earned impressive box office returns, nominations at the 2016 Africa Movie Academy Awards, and a place at the venerable Toronto International Film Festival’s “City to City” program. Nevertheless, Oriahi chooses to take the long view and focus more on what Nigerian filmmaking will be in future years. Just ten years ago, the industry was experiencing the growing pains of a distribution crisis that exposed certain limits of its informal organization and the impossibility of imposing formal distribution structures from above. That crisis prompted fundamental changes in the way Nollywood films move through space and time to find their audiences, and attracted an influx of capital to create and control these new modes of distribution. Of course, the mainstream of the industry continues to rely on informal financing, production, and distribution. But another segment of the industry has consolidated around a handful of companies, each with a controlling share in one branch of distribution: Filmhouse/FilmOne (cinema), iROKOtv/ROK Studios (online video on demand), as well as Multichoice and EbonyLife (satellite television). No longer content to merely distribute Nollywood, these companies have made the foray into production, and they choose cautiously which types of films to green light. Fortunately, Taxi Driver had time to incubate as an independent film under Oriahi’s House5 Productions before FilmOne, the sister company to the Filmhouse Cinemas chain, signed on and lent additional resources as well as an in-house supervising producer, Don Omope, to the project.
Shot predominantly at night on the streets between Church Missionary Society and Obalende, Taxi Driver knows its way around Lagos. In the opening sequence, engines roar as two vehicles tear through downtown Lagos Island at full throttle. Tires squeal and bass emanates from the sound systems of the cars. The sequence delivers velocity and motion. The fast and furious car chase leads down Broad Street, making a hard right just before Freedom Park, formerly a British prison. Neglected colonial administrative buildings rush by at break-neck speed. The deep history of these sites at the heart of Lagos flits by in a fraction of a second. After all, we are on a car chase, not a tour bus.
The opening chase gives way to the story proper. After his estranged father’s death, Adigun (Femi Jacobs) journeys to Lagos to take possession of the man’s taxi and, with the help of his father’s friend Taiwo (Odunlade Adekola), strives to build a new life in Lagos. He has arrived empty-pocketed and must learn the hard lessons that money troubles have to teach, the hustle for money being a central trope of Nollywood. The landlord is a tyrant, the neighbor is combative, and his only regular customer, a sharp-tongued Pidginphone prostitute named Delia, ridicules his ignorance of the city. Although years of living apart have left a rift between father and son, Adigun now finds himself driving his father’s taxi, toasting his friends, and even living in his rented room in what becomes a search both for a place in a hostile city and clues about his father’s life and death. Adigun gradually learns of Taiwo’s and his father’s involvement with the Lagos underground and the shadowy boss Baba Mistura (Toyin Oshinaike), but not soon enough to save himself from becoming implicated.
The work of a taximan offers a natural vehicle for showcasing the city’s many faces while remaining focalized from below, from the vantage point of the people of the city themselves. The movement through urban space is matched by the movement in search of answers about his estranged father, which leads him deeper into the Lagos underworld, not to mention the movement away from a trusted friend and closer to the strangers he comes to depend upon for his safety and self-discovery. After Delia is attacked by a client that Taiwo and Mistura have arranged, she turns to Adigun for sanctuary, at which point the film’s romantic subplot begins to take clear shape. Here danger creates the necessity for trust and vulnerability.
The film alludes to occult forces, but by comparison with classic Nollywood this is domesticated juju, something more suited to the cinemas. In fact, in a number of New Nollywood films the representation of the occult suggests the referent is no longer real life stories of such powers, but rather the stories that past Nollywood films tell about such powers. There is something uncanny about Taxi Driver, which looks like a genre film we might have seen before, in many cities or many film industries. It demonstrates a keen awareness of how cinema elsewhere in the world looks, sounds, paces itself, creates characterization, and resolves its narrative conflict. At the same time, the film is undeniably grounded in Lagos. The soundscape filled with humming generators, the call to prayer imposing itself over top of dialogue, the mix of Yoruba and Pidgin English, not to mention the choice of iconic locations.The result is a plausible working-class storyworld and a fresh look at Lagos.
Taxi Driver mixes stylistic innovation and dramatic storytelling with a grounded sense of the old city. It suggests the emerging talent of this director and his generation’s cohort. The film also indicates what is possible when independent creative vision receives the financial backing, technical support, and theatrical guarantees of a major distributor like FilmOne. Many things are changing in Nollywood today, not unlike the tremendous change Lagos has witnessed in the last decade and a half. In this respect, Taxi Driver provides one measure of these changes.
