In Her Daughters’ Mom, her debut function, Chukwu returns to the vulnerabilities and company of society’s marginalised, this time turning her lens to womanhood, by means of a girl and her daughters whose lives rely upon the favour of males, each born and unborn.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
Many who’ve seen the tender however fraught Ti e Nbo (2023), Chinàzaēkpērē Chukwu’s debut quick—not counting A Psalm for Abigail (2021), which received her the Greatest Director award as a pupil of EbonyLife Inventive Academy—can be curious to see what the Nigerian writer-director can do with the time and house {that a} feature-length affords. The operative phrase is “many”.
Ti e Nbo is a queer movie that explores homophobia in a rustic the place homophobia is rife and public shows of identical intercourse amorous relationships are an imprisonable offence. The five-minute movie was a daring transfer for a brand new filmmaker introducing herself to a largely conservative nation and movie trade. After all, some can be curious. What would she spend money on for her first function? What would an extended runtime allow her to discover?
In Her Daughters’ Mom (2026), her debut function, Chukwu returns to the vulnerabilities and company of society’s marginalised, this time turning her lens to womanhood, by means of a girl and her daughters whose lives rely upon the favour of males, each born and unborn.
Set in an unspecified time interval—presumably pre-2007, given the model of naira notes displayed onscreen and the early 2000s manufacturing design—between Benin, Edo State and Warri, Delta State, the place a bewilderingly imprecise public disaster—presumably the 2003 peak of the Warri Disaster—is making components of the city unlivable, the movie follows the personal struggles of a household whose survival is tied to a mom’s skill to provide beginning to a son.
Ejiro, the protagonist, is a girl in her thirties who has already lived with all of the labels anticipated of a girl in a patriarchal society. With no dillydallying, Her Daughters’ Mom introduces her as a sixteen-year-old daughter being married off to an older man by a glad father. Within the subsequent scene, she is a widow present process widowhood rites, together with the apply of ingesting the water used to scrub the corpse of her late husband. And proper after the title card, she is a mom returning to her father’s residence in Warri together with her two daughters, having been thrown out of her marital residence for her lack of a male baby.
Performed by Ejovwoke Obas Olikuntuyi, who finds the stability between the exhaustion of a girl who has led a troublesome life and the staunchness of a girl who has mastered the artwork of creating sensible selections inside a subservient tradition, Ejiro settles right into a childhood residence that she considers her personal, whereas she makes plans to lastly begin incomes a dwelling to provide her daughters the training that she didn’t obtain. However she is shortly reminded that the house actually belongs to her father (Chris Biyibi), and he insists on marrying her off once more, this time to a extra appropriately aged Benin-based widower referred to as Osato (Philip Asaya).
Initially, with the assist of her single and childfree aunt, Akpobome (Najite Dede), who as soon as escaped an analogous destiny, Ejiro refuses. She intends to work for the way forward for her daughters, one in every of whom is nearly as outdated as she was when her father first married her off.
Fifteen-year-old Ejiata (a remodeled and convincing Osas Okonyon) will probably be a medical physician, she says, and nine-year-old Miriodere (newcomer Bliss Ajienomwenhi) will grow to be a lawyer. However when her father leaves her no selection, and with the streets of Warri changing into too troubled to lift two daughters in, she negotiates an association with Osato. She desires educated daughters. He desires the identical factor her late husband’s household used in opposition to her, whatever the price.
The narrative that unfolds from this premise is a snapshot of the loneliness and cultural humiliations that many ladies endure within the quest for male youngsters, and the way even the potential of a long-awaited son is usually a bargaining device for a girl who operates in a society that’s as agnatic as it’s natalist.
However energy imbalances stay energy imbalances, no matter what little company a girl is ready to assert inside such a construction, and Her Daughters’ Mom stays cognisant of this notion. In a single devastating scene, when Ejiro travels to Warri whereas the disaster rages on, Osato aggressively warns her: “Ejiro, should you wan kill your self, superb. But when something occur to my pikin, my boy, I’m going kill you first earlier than you kill am”. It’s a terrifying use of hyperbole, if one can name it that. And but, it’s an apt description of society’s therapy of ladies as useful primarily for his or her capability for copy.
From manufacturing design to cinematography, Chukwu visually frames the movie’s titular mom and daughters as ever-conscious guests of their new residence, and Osato as a cushty, omnipresent outsider inside their story. However the cultural stress for procreation and male heirs is just not manifested solely by means of Ejiro and her women. The pressures are additionally channelled by means of the person of the home, as Asaya subtly however visibly alters his manner the second the opportunity of a son turns into actual.
It’s evident in Osato’s temper and carriage round their family, in his therapy of Ejiro and her daughters, and in his lively involvement within the preparation for the attainable arrival of a son. Whereas Ejiro noticeably struggles, Chukwu trains the digicam on Osato as he conceals a smile on the information of a attainable being pregnant, restrains himself from shedding tears of pleasure when he sees a child bathtub, and hums with tempered pleasure within the presence of a crib.
In capturing the efficiency of marriage and household life inside these circumstances, Her Daughters’ Mom additionally explores the sexual, financial, and psychological realities of patriarchal energy imbalances in marriage, in addition to the sacrifices of motherhood, intergenerational trauma, and the tendency for girls’s relationships with males to have an effect on their relationships with their daughters whereas additionally spilling into their daughters’ relationships with males, changing into each an agent of radicalisation in opposition to patriarchal expectations and an inheritable attribute that passes on from mom to daughter.
Ejiro, herself, is her mom’s daughter, their shared trauma mirrored within the damaging marital conditions they select or don’t have any selection however to remain in. Ejiata’s friendship with a seemingly well-meaning boy from college (Adeoluwa Akintoba)—a young story of younger love, together with a very optimistic and picturesque sequence, carried particularly by Okonyon—turns into burdened by the dangerously transactional relationship that her mom has together with her stepfather. And their mother-daughter relationship has to compete with the trauma that Ejiro comes into motherhood with and the luggage that Ejiata was born into.
If there’s one thing concerning the story, the themes, and the way the movie approaches them that appears like studying a Nigerian work of literary fiction, that’s as a result of Her Daughters’ Mom is certainly a movie supposed to really feel like a mixture of types between Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s Keep With Me (2017). Chukwu transfers her self-written story to the display screen with a persistent literary disposition, from thematic preoccupations to the movie’s pacing, enhancing, and visible design.
That type is each a boon and a bane, although extra of the previous. Her Daughters’ Mom often lingers only a bit longer than it must. However like many good Nigerian works of literary fiction, it hits like a bittersweet hug from somebody acquainted—a transferring, poignant story of defiance and resilience within the midst of harsh societal realities.
Ranking: 4/5
*Her Daughters’ Mom premiered at Movie Africa, UK on twenty eighth October 2026 and is headed to the Africa Worldwide Movie Pageant (AFRIFF) in November 2026. It was just lately nominated for Greatest Debut Function Movie by a Director on the 2026 Africa Film Academy Awards (AMAA).
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a author and movie critic writing from Lagos. She has a grasp’s diploma in legislation however spends most of her time consuming, learning and discussing movie and TV. She’s notably involved about what artwork has to say about society’s relationship with girls. Join together with her on X @Nneka_Viv
