Mami Wata

Director: C.J. 'Fiery' Obasi

2023 / 107min / DCP

Drawing from the deep well of West African folklore, Nigerian filmmaker C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s sumptuous, seductive, thrillingly strange black-and-white fable, shot in the rural seaside villages of Benin, focuses on a mother and her daughters—healer Mama Efe (Rita Edochie), the rebellious Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh), and the loyal Prisca (Evelyne Ily)—caught up in a struggle to find favor in the eyes of the eponymous water goddess. “Manages to distill themes that are at once primal and complex with virtuosic simplicity… a tightly controlled vision that induces a sense of the suddenly, viscerally new.”—The New York Times