Damilola Orimogunje reached Venice with a film that does not behave as if volume is the same thing as importance.
Dear Ajayi, his second feature after For Maria Ebun Pataki, became the first Nigerian film selected in competition at Giornate degli Autori, the independent Venice section commonly known as Venice Days.
The historical first is easy to headline. Orimogunje’s more interesting position is visible across the public conversations surrounding the film. He is thinking about what a Nigerian art film must do after a major festival, how domestic audiences enter the plan and why intimate stories need the same commercial discipline as louder productions.
This RollCall Africa interview profile draws from Orimogunje’s separate public remarks to Deadline, Eye for Film and earlier conversations about For Maria. The quotations are limited and attributed. The analysis and structure are RollCall Africa’s.
“I’m Absolutely Thrilled”
Orimogunje told Deadline he was “absolutely thrilled” by the Venice selection. The response is understandable, but the achievement becomes clearer when placed beside the type of career he has chosen.
For Maria Ebun Pataki was a quiet Yoruba-language drama about postpartum depression. It avoided the comic relief, moral explanation and exaggerated confrontation often used to make difficult subjects easier to market. The film won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at Film Africa and later reached Netflix.
Dear Ajayi continues the interest in interior life while expanding the canvas. Set in 1990s southwestern Nigeria, it follows estranged sisters Ade and Titi as they live under one roof and care for their paralysed mother. Bimbo Akintola, Tosin Adeyemi and Lanre Hassan lead a cast that also includes William Benson, Antar Laniyan, Uzoamaka Power, Michelle Dede, Chioma Omeruah, Kalu Ikeagwu, Tope Tedela, Baaj Adebule and Idowu Philips.
The Venice selection did not reward a sudden change of direction. It confirmed that the patient, emotionally controlled filmmaking visible in his debut could operate at a larger international level.
READ ALSO: Dear Ajayi became the first Nigerian film to compete at Venice Days.
A Family Film About the Cost of Making Art
The public synopsis places care, grief and sisterhood at the centre. Reviews from Venice have also identified a second line running through the film: the economic pressure surrounding artists.
Ade is a nurse whose income supports the household while her husband struggles to sell his art. Titi performs other people’s songs in a club and wants a record contract. Their creative lives are not presented as abstract dreams. They sit inside rent, work, family obligation and the unequal expectations placed on women.
That makes Dear Ajayi a film about the conditions under which art is made. Talent does not remove material pressure. Recognition can arrive with demands that change the work. Family members can love an artist and still resent the instability surrounding the ambition.
Orimogunje’s own career makes the subject commercially relevant. He is building intimate cinema inside an industry where financing, distribution and audience access often reward faster and more familiar products.
“She’s Crying for Help Every Time She Sings”
Speaking about Titi, Orimogunje told Eye for Film: “She’s crying for help every time she sings.”
The line explains his method. Performance is not interruption or decoration. It is character information.
Titi’s music expresses ambition, frustration and a need to be recognised. The film uses songs associated with artists including Angélique Kidjo and Nina Simone, but the emotional purpose is personal. A familiar song changes when performed by a woman trying to explain a life her family does not fully accept.
This interest in behaviour rather than declaration also shaped For Maria. Orimogunje has repeatedly trusted silence, faces, routine and domestic space to carry information that another film might place in a speech.
That trust is one reason his work travels through festivals. It is also a distribution challenge. Quiet drama must be marketed through emotional stakes, not inflated into a genre promise the film does not fulfil.
The African Distribution Priority
Deadline’s conversation with Orimogunje highlighted his intention to prioritise African distribution alongside the international festival route.
FilmOne Entertainment is attached for West Africa, while Italian company Luminalia handles world sales. This is a meaningful structure because it does not leave the home audience as an afterthought to international prestige.
Nigerian art films have often faced a false choice. A filmmaker can make a culturally specific, formally ambitious work and struggle for local screens, or move toward commercial convention to improve theatrical access. The better answer is not to weaken the work. It is to build a more accurate distribution plan.
Dear Ajayi has recognisable actors, family conflict and a period setting that can support public positioning. Its campaign should explain those accessible elements without misrepresenting the pace and tone.
West African distribution also gives Orimogunje a chance to collect audience evidence at home. Festival reviews establish critical reception. Admissions, theatre retention and audience response will show whether the film can build a local market for his next project.
From a Debut to an Operating Model
The movement from For Maria to Dear Ajayi suggests a career model rather than two isolated films.
The debut established a creative identity: controlled performances, social pressure inside domestic life, and subjects that Nigerian mainstream cinema has not always handled with patience. The second film keeps that identity while adding a Nigeria-Germany co-production, international sales representation, a West African distributor and competition at Venice Days.
Each addition reduces a different risk. Co-production broadens financing and industry access. A sales agent creates an international route. A regional distributor gives the film a home-market plan. A major festival provides validation and buyer attention.
The filmmaker still carries creative risk. The producer still faces recoupment, marketing and release risk. The structure does not guarantee success. It means the project is not relying on one platform to solve every problem.
What Nigerian Filmmakers Should Take From the Venice First
The wrong lesson would be to copy Orimogunje’s tone or search for another family drama designed for festival selection.
The useful lesson is that a filmmaker can develop a recognisable voice and build commercial infrastructure around it. The voice attracts collaborators because it is specific. The infrastructure gives the work a path beyond the production.
Venice also matters because it places a Nigerian production inside a section that evaluates independent cinema internationally. The selection does not prove that Nollywood has solved its festival access problem. It creates a new reference for producers planning projects that need co-production, sales and regional distribution from the beginning.
READ ALSO: African festival success needs a ledger of sales, releases and audience outcomes.
The Next Question Is Not Another First
Orimogunje has made history. His next task is more ordinary and more difficult.
The film must reach paying audiences. Luminalia must turn international attention into territorial agreements. FilmOne must position the title for West African cinemas. The director must convert the credibility of Venice into better development conditions for what follows.
A festival first becomes industrial progress when another filmmaker can use the route without having to begin from zero.
Dear Ajayi shows a Nigerian director building that route around a quiet film about family, art and the pressure of responsibility. Orimogunje did not make the work louder to reach Venice. The commercial achievement will be ensuring that the market learns how to carry its quietness.
