Fantastic Film Fest 2024 Review - Mami Wata

Images courtesy of Original Spin.

Iyi is a village in West Africa led by the teachings of divine water goddess Mami Wata, who through her intermediary Mama Efe (Rita Edochie), live by the divine traditional faith-driven ways of their ancestors, paying tribute via gifts and crops in reverence of her ways. Repeated attempts from outside doctors to provide the village with modern medicine and infrastructure are turned down by Efe despite the protests from her daughters Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen), though it is the arrival of foreign rebel Jasper (Emeka Amakeze) that complicates the existing discontent among certain villagers, who have grown tired of Iyi’s prioritisation of tradition over the advancements of the outside world.

Shot in Benin, Mami Wata is Nigerian filmmaker C.J. Obasi’s third feature after festival darlings Ojuju (2014) and O-Town (2015), and he wears his highly stylised filmmaker influences on his sleeve. Bathed in gorgeous monochromatic black and white, characters almost appear glowing, their seemingly fluorescent body-paint creating a striking effect. In tandem with a heavy use of handheld camerawork, an idiosyncratic effect is created, where rather than peering into a painting, the audience is tasked to reckon with the beauty of what truly exists, which Obasi almost wholly captures with a mere camera. It’s a clever way of disguising the low budget too, working within its limitations to create something truly majestic. 

There’s an interesting relationship in this film between the abstract, stylistic aspects of worship and the mundanity of the life of the villagers. Much of the focus of the film is on the day-to-day lives of the villagers, such as their love lives, jobs, family, administrative challenges and medical concerns with Iyi lacking real hospitals – and there is a beauty in the depiction of this relationship (at least until the action-packed third act). Sometimes this mundanity manifests in a certain lack of commitment to its own stylistic prowess - the narrative is, at least 90% of the time, very grounded and straightforward, and I wish it would’ve leaned into the abstract significantly more. Spirituality is clearly very ingrained into the mundane lives of these characters, and I feel the film should’ve communicated this sentiment more clearly. It’s never bad though! There’s still a sense of a strong emotional connection between the viewer and the trials and tribulations that the villagers encounter in their battle for the right to worship.

There’s a clear reverence for tradition and the divine baked into Mami Wata, which comes across not just from the behaviour of its characters, but also the film’s existence altogether, as if Obasi himself believes in the deity of Mami Wata. It’s never to the point of conservatism, however - Obasi’s appreciation for this spirituality comes across as an earnest love of culture and the people themselves. The criticisms of the modern world may turn off some viewers, especially as the film delves into the trappings and corruption of the outside world’s attempts to gain a foothold in Iyi, an ethos that the film’s third act commits wholeheartedly to, but the results are stunning. What this has to say on cultural tradition and its ability to be trod upon feels reverent, emotionally resonant, charged, and most of all, somewhat personal.

Mami Wata has given me the strong urge to delve further into Nigerian cinema, a large blind spot in my sphere as well as the cinema of other African countries. My relatively small gripes with the implementation of its visual style should not speak as a disservice to the film, which is full of beautiful filmic techniques and performances. It truly has the ability to spellbind, yet keeps its feet rooted in a deeply nuanced point of interest: an ever-changing reckoning with modernity.

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Mami Wata is screening as part of Fantastic Film Festival Australia 2024. The festival runs from the 17th of April to the 10th of May, check out the festival website for tickets and more info here.