Last Saturday, all roads led to Filmhouse Cinemas, Lekki, Lagos as celebrities turned out en masse for the exclusive screening and premiere of the highly anticipated movie, Farming.
The premiere had in attendance stars like Beverly Naya, Adunni Ade, Latasha Lagos, Eku Edewor, Ifan Micheals, Mimi Onlaja, and Akah Nnani amongst others.
Written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Farming tells the tale of his traumatic early life turned into drama for his directorial debut. The movie premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and won the Michael Powell Award at the 2019 Edinburgh Film Festival.
Farming, which had been in the works for nearly two decades, explored a real-life mystery: it is the incredible story of how Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a young Nigerian boy raised by white foster parents in 1970s Tilbury, Essex had forged an identity for himself in a violently racist local skinhead gang, and lived to tell the tale.
The film further dramatises a brutal and moving coming-of-age and shines a light on a little-known chapter in the story of race relations in Britain: the practice that led to thousands of Nigerian children like Akinnuoye-Agbaje being ‘farmed out’ to British families in that period.
In directing the film, Adewale had to go through all the nightmarish boyhood trauma and violence in details for a second time. “A production designer rebuilt the house to perfection and I wasn’t prepared for the well of emotions that it would evoke as I was immediately reduced to the eight-year-old boy that used to hide behind the sofa,” he recalls.
Agbaje also had to step into the shoes of his father by playing him. “It’s a project I couldn’t live without telling and this is what really motivated me to tell it, it was surreal to stand in my father’s shoes and look at myself from his perspective, that was both healing and painful and enlightening,” Adewale states.
The movie also stars Nigerian Damson Idris, who plays Enitan, a central character in the film, which hits on sensitive issues like racism, discrimination and touches slightly on modern-day slavery. Nollywood diva, Genevieve Nnaji plays Agbaje’s real-life mother in the movie.
Farming hits cinemas across the nation today, Friday, October 25.