Wapah Ezeigwe

Wapah Ezeigwe is a Nigerian filmmaker known for making films that explore queer identity, love, and relationships in African societies. He is best known for writing, directing, and producing the short film Country Love (2022) and for directing A Little Time Left (2023).

Quotes

• “What I was really bothered about was if I would even get queer people to tell the story. Because I met lots of actors that turned down the role because of that intimate scene; the whole making out and everything. There was one heterosexual actor, who was like, ‘Change the intimate scene and I’ll do it.’ I was like, ‘Number one, you are heterosexual and you are telling me to change this scene? Like, how dare you?’ I can’t change my story for a heterosexual. That’s the last thing I’m going to do. I can’t even consider that, you get? Because when they talk about queerness here in Nigeria, it’s always a joke. It’s sort of a caricature,” explains Ezeigwe.
• “So I’m happy that, at the end of the day, I found some queer people who were willing and bold enough to actually tell the story and, you know, take up the scene.”
  • [1]
• “In 2015, 90% of respondents surveyed supported the law, but in 2019 about 75% support it. This shows a significant 15% drop in four years. While most Nigerians still view LGBT rights negatively, the public seems to be moving towards a higher level of acceptance and tolerance,”
  • [2]
• The study also found “a gradual increase in acceptance of LGBT+ persons. The results show that 60% of Nigerians will not accept a family member who is LGBT. While this is high, it is significant progress from the 83% who said they would not accept an LGBT family member in 2017.”
  • [3]
• “Since January 2014,” it noted, “several said that they had adopted self-censoring behaviour by significantly and consciously altering their gender presentation to avoid detection or suspicion by members of the public and to avoid arrest and extortion.”
  • [4]
• “I’m very intentional. And I’m very political about my film. Very, very political. Because nobody in Nigeria is going to write a queer character. Never. Nobody. So my character is femme because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a femme character being represented… Maybe in Western cinema. But in African cinema, there is never a femme character. Even when we say, ‘Let’s portray a queer character’, [that character is] always masculine. And me being femme, I was like, ‘No, I can’t talk about a queer person and the person is not femme’. That character kind of shows a bit of me, because I’m a very fearless person. Even though I live in a very stifling society. I don’t let people stifle my self-expression at all. So I don’t want the character to be, like, the victim. I want to represent femme people that are very powerful. I don’t want people to have sympathy or pity. Like, ‘Oh, let’s have pity for him. He is femme, he is queer and he is suffering.’ No. We have to see our identity from a place of power.”
  • [5]