For Damilola Orimogunje, there are many stories the industry isn’t telling. ‘I like to centre the human experience in my films; poor healthcare, poor infrastructure, education and more,’ He says. ‘So when you see it, you can see pain, grief, anguish in these stories. You focus on the plot.’
Damilola Orimogunje was late for our interview. In his defence, I was late too; he just happened to show up later than I did. It was the middle of December and we’d been stuck in the ever-present Lagos traffic for a number of hours, exchanging expected arrival times and apologies via text. We were to meet at The Garden in Ikoyi for drinks, where, upon my arrival, there was a party in the outdoor space.
I found a relatively quiet corner and waited, thinking about the person I was about to meet for the first time. Damilola makes grief and pain palpable in his films. Little surprise when For Maria (Ebun Pataki), his 2020 film depicting post-partum depression, hit number one on Netflix Nigeria last year for 16 days. In the short film Losing My Religion, Damilola explored struggling to balance family and faith to the main character's detriment. In Mo, we see prostitution and human trafficking. When he walks into the restaurant, he stalls, trying to ask a waiter for a young lady who had come in earlier. I wave, but he doesn’t see me yet from behind his dark glasses...