Adé Sultan Sangodoyin conceived We Must Begin Again, Together in 2021. Four years later, after rewrites, financing challenges and a return to the city where he grew up, the 18-minute short is ready to meet audiences.
Set in Ibadan, the film follows Bimbi, played by Teniola Aladese, whose world is upended when she discovers that her husband is having an affair with her brother. But the betrayal is only the point of entry. Sangodoyin is interested in what happens when the people and institutions that shape a person’s understanding of the world begin to come apart.
The film is set to have its world premiere at the 23rd Afrika Film Festival Köln, taking place from September 17 to 27, 2026. For Sangodoyin, the festival marks the first public step for a project that has taken years to arrive at its final form.
It is also a significant step in his own evolution. After working as a co-producer on Eyimofe, the acclaimed 2020 film that premiered at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, Sangodoyin moved behind the camera as writer-director of his own story.
The journey has brought him back to Ibadan, back to a screenplay he repeatedly questioned and rewrote, and toward a feature-length story that the short is designed to introduce.
The Story Had to Be Told in Ibadan
Ibadan is not simply the backdrop of We Must Begin Again, Together. Sangodoyin grew up in the city before leaving for university, and its physical and social landscape became central to the storyworld he wanted to create.
“It is a city where class structures can feel very stark and visible, which suited the Nigerian social landscape we were trying to depict,” he says. “You have abject poverty coexisting with polo clubs and wealth. That kind of proximity between radically different worlds and the complex relationships between them is very particular to Ibadan, and it would have been difficult to recreate that elsewhere.”
That proximity between radically different worlds is reflected in the film’s characters. Bimbi’s personal crisis unfolds within a conservative community where social expectations determine what can be said, who can belong and what must remain hidden.
“Simply put, the characters are in conflict with their storyworld,” Sangodoyin says. “It is an old and conservative town. You see that through the sprawl of its bronze roofs and a sense of timelessness that feels like the place is somehow stuck in the past.”
The visual language reinforces that tension. Wide shots place Bimbi within the city, allowing its structures and spaces to loom around her. The same environment shapes Jude and Junior, whose experiences are complicated by the need to conceal aspects of themselves.
“It must have been very hard growing up in a town where you must keep who you are a secret,” Sangodoyin says.
The setting therefore becomes part of the film’s larger question about identity. What happens when the rules governing a person’s life have been inherited rather than chosen?
For Sangodoyin, that question sits at the heart of the title.
Breaking From What Was Handed Down
We Must Begin Again, Together is a title that suggests renewal, but Sangodoyin does not see beginning again as simply leaving the past behind. The film’s idea of starting over is tied to examining the beliefs and value systems people inherit and deciding which ones they are willing to carry forward.
“It is about breaking free of ideas and value systems that have been handed over to you,” he says. “It is about seeing things as they truly are, seeing humans as we are: simple, complex, different, familiar. It is about knowing that everything is changeable. We can start again, making room for others, opening up a crevice of empathy in our hearts.”
That idea plays out through Bimbi’s relationships with her husband, brother, mother, father and aunt. The betrayal is therefore larger than an act of infidelity. Her husband and brother’s involvement forces her to confront the structures of intimacy and family that she has trusted.
The short is a proof of concept for a feature-length film adapted from Sangodoyin’s thesis script at film school. The longer story gives him room to explore those relationships more deeply, while the short concentrates the conflict around Bimbi and the choice she eventually has to make.
The double betrayal raises the stakes, but it also allows the filmmaker to examine patriarchy, femininity and the values that determine what is considered normal within the community.
A scene on a bus, which also features prominently in the film’s poster, becomes an important moment of reflection. Bimbi is alone, removed from the people and structures that have influenced her.
“She is by herself, stripped of any adornments or external influence,” Sangodoyin says. “She has to decide for herself, exercise her agency, reflect on the world she lives in. She has to think of her husband and brother’s place within it and how that serves as a reflection of some of her experience within this world as a woman.”
The journey through the city becomes part of that internal movement.
“When you move through space and time, change occurs,” he says. “She makes her decision there, to identify with what feels most natural and human to her.”
By the end of the film, Bimbi’s decision is deliberately clear to Sangodoyin, even if he does not want to prescribe how an audience should respond to it.
“We tried to make Bimbi’s choice quite clear,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to speak about it as the audience must be allowed to experience it.”
From Eyimofe to the Director’s Chair
Sangodoyin’s transition from co-producer to writer-director is part of a longer process of learning how films are made.
His early experience included working on Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 as a production assistant and director’s assistant. Being close to the director gave him the opportunity to observe the filmmaking process from inside the film village and to watch how decisions made on set eventually shaped the finished film.
“I was always in the film village seeing the director work and had the opportunity to look at the monitor,” he says.
Those observations shaped his thinking about blocking, editing and transitions. Cinematographer Yinka Edward, he recalls, was particularly good at suggesting practical ways for scenes to evolve.
Afolayan’s approach to editing also stayed with him.
“He would say things like, ‘I don’t need that shot, I will cut from this scene to that other one,’ and I found it fascinating that he knew with precision what he wanted to do across scenes,” Sangodoyin says. “I do that as well now. It is one way of creating as a director, thinking of your edit as you film.”
He also sat in on the editing process and learned how footage captured on set was assembled into a finished film.
“You learn these things from watching and so many other things one learns by osmosis,” he says.
Sangodoyin’s path to formal film school was less straightforward. He was accepted to Columbia and USC but could not afford to attend. He subsequently travelled through parts of the United States, including Alabama and Georgia, before receiving the opportunity to work on Eyimofe and returning to Lagos.
“In retrospect, that was my film school,” he says.
Working on Eyimofe gave him a different kind of education. Watching the directors work with actors, particularly the process of getting performers to behave as their characters rather than simply perform scenes, influenced how he began to think about directing.
When he eventually came to direct We Must Begin Again, Together, he carried those lessons into his own process, particularly his focus on story and on helping actors inhabit the characters on the page.
The film also brought together collaborators he already trusted. Jamiu Shoyode, who worked with Sangodoyin on Lady, and Melissa Adeyemo, who produced Eyimofe, were involved in the production.
“I know them very well and trust their abilities,” he says. “Because of how good they are at what they do, I did not need to produce. I only focused on the story and performances, basically directing. It is a very healthy way of working for a director.”
His previous shorts, Different Plains and A Cemetery of Doves, were similarly drawn to intimate stories about people whose experiences are often overlooked.
“Those are the stories I hope to amplify: people on the margins of society, people whose stories run beneath history,” he says.
We Must Begin Again, Together continues that interest while moving into a more clearly structured narrative.
“I don’t think I have just yet, one never knows and maybe one just evolves,” Sangodoyin says when asked about finding his voice. “But making a film that is purely within the framework of naturalism, one with a clear narrative, felt like another beginning.”
Four Years to Find Its Way Home
The film’s journey began in 2021, but Sangodoyin did not shoot it until 2025.
During those four years, the screenplay changed repeatedly. He returned to it, questioned elements of the story and rewrote it, gradually moving further away from his first conception of the film.
Financing was one of the production’s biggest challenges. But the delay ultimately gave him something that an earlier production might not have had: time.
Rather than allowing the difficulty of raising resources to stall the project completely, he used the period to strengthen the screenplay. By the time production began, he believed the story had become much stronger than the version he first imagined.
That patience is reflected in the film’s eventual shape. The short is only 18 minutes, but it is designed to open the door to a larger feature-length story.
The film’s world extends beyond Bimbi’s immediate crisis. Her relationships with her husband, brother, mother, father and aunt provide different points through which Sangodoyin can examine the social and familial structures surrounding her.
The feature script allows those relationships to breathe in ways the short cannot. But the short establishes the central conflict and demonstrates the visual and narrative approach Sangodoyin wants to carry into the longer work.
The film’s world premiere at Afrika Film Festival Köln came after the production entered the festival circuit following post-production.
“It felt like a natural home for us, for the film, and we were very happy for it to have its world premiere there,” he says.
Sangodoyin has spoken about his discomfort with the way “Nollywood” can sometimes be used as a catch-all label for Nigerian filmmaking. For this project, he would rather see it understood simply as Nigerian cinema, within the wider tradition of African filmmaking that has influenced him.
He has cited filmmakers including Idrissa Ouedraogo, Tunde Kelani, Ousmane Sembène, Souleymane Cissé and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun as part of that tradition.
“I am trying to contribute my voice to that ongoing tradition,” he says.
The festival premiere is only the beginning. Sangodoyin hopes the film will continue through the festival circuit before reaching Nigerian audiences, including through cultural and educational spaces where the questions it raises can be discussed beyond the screening room.
Alongside Aladese, the film stars Patrick Diabuah, Yetunde Oduwole, Sunday Joy, Kadejo Sogo and Rose Odika. Adeyemo serves as producer, with Shoyode among the production collaborators.
For Sangodoyin, the larger hope is that audiences leave the film thinking about their own capacity for empathy when circumstances become difficult.
“I hope audiences leave asking themselves what they are capable of, not in easy circumstances, but in difficult ones,” he says.
After four years of returning to the same story, We Must Begin Again, Together is finally moving outward, from the Ibadan where it was made to an international festival audience and, eventually, toward the feature-length story that has been waiting behind it.
The film’s journey to the screen has been its own version of beginning again: a story conceived, questioned, rewritten and finally brought home.
