Nigerian cinema has reached Venice before. What it has not done, until now, is compete at Venice Days. Damilola Orimogunje’s second feature, Dear Ajayi, will make its world premiere in competition at the 23rd Giornate degli Autori — the independent parallel section of the Venice International Film Festival known in English as Venice Days — making it the first Nigerian production ever to enter the section’s competition. That is a genuine, specific first, and it deserves to be marked as one.
Dear Ajayi is set in southwestern Nigeria during the 1990s and centres on estranged sisters Ade and Titi Ajayi, whose contrasting lives are forced back together when they must care for their paralysed mother — a reunion that reopens old wounds and confronts the family’s fractured past. Bimbo Akintola, one of the most respected performers in Nigerian cinema, leads alongside Tosin Adeyemi, in an ensemble that also includes Antar Laniyan, Uzoamaka Power, Michelle Dede, Chioma “Chigul” Omeruah, Kalu Ikeagwu, Tope Tedela, Baaj Adebule, and Idowu Philips. FilmOne Entertainment is attached as West African distributor; Italian sales company Luminalia handles world sales.
Why Venice Days, Specifically, Matters
Venice Days was founded in the spirit of the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes — an independent section, run parallel to the official festival, dedicated to auteur-driven and independent work chosen for artistic quality rather than commercial or diplomatic considerations. For a Nigerian film to compete there is different from a Nigerian film screening out of competition or in a market. It means the film was selected, on its merits, into a curated competitive lineup of the international independent cinema the section exists to champion. Dear Ajayi will be eligible for the GdA Director’s Award and the People’s Choice Award.
The film’s Nigeria-Germany co-production status is the structural detail that makes this achievement legible in the terms RollCallAfrica has used all year. The co-production infrastructure — the connective tissue between African stories and European financing and festival access — is exactly what we have argued the continent’s cinema needs more of. Dear Ajayi is that infrastructure producing a result: a Nigerian story, made with German co-production support, reaching a competitive berth at one of the most important independent sections in world cinema. This is the model working.
The Bimbo Akintola Year
There is a personal throughline worth naming. Bimbo Akintola has had a remarkable 2026 — an AMVCA Best Lead Actress nomination for To Kill A Monkey, a central role in the record-setting The Return of Arinzo, and now the lead in the first Nigerian film to compete at Venice Days. A veteran performer whose formal prestige and commercial presence have converged in a single year, Akintola is doing the kind of work that anchors a film’s festival credibility. Her presence in Dear Ajayi is part of why the film carries the weight it does.
Orimogunje, for his part, moves with this film from promising second-feature director to internationally competitive auteur. The selection places him among the Nigerian filmmakers — alongside the Esiri Brothers, Akinola Davies Jr., C.J. Obasi — who are building careers on the international festival circuit rather than solely in the domestic commercial market. Dear Ajayi at Venice Days is his arrival in that company.
RollCallAfrica will cover the film’s Venice premiere and track its awards prospects across the section. The Lido in September now holds a Nigerian film in competition for the first time. That is history, and we are here for it.
— Amara Diallo. RollCallAfrica. 4 August 2026. Sources: La Biennale di Venezia / Giornate degli Autori official (2026 competition lineup), FilmOne Entertainment, Luminalia (world sales), 2o9ine Films.
