Nollywood’s Evolution: What We Lost, What We Gained

The industry, once known as Nollywood, was a promise. It was unmistakably Nigerian in the early 1990s and 2000s: a cassette-tape industry of storytellers, home-video producers, local stars, bold color palettes, and fast turnaround. The films weren’t polished through high-end global production values; they were urgent and alive, telling stories of Lagos, Kano, Port Harcourt, and the villages in between.

Then, the stories Nollywood movies enacted were ours. We watched, identified, laughed, cried, and argued. They reflected local myths, local struggles, humor, the very texture of how Nigeria looked and felt.

However, something changed. The local market still mattered to Nigerian filmmakers, but the world began to take notice of Nollywood movies, with the emergence of streaming platforms, global festivals, co-productions, and cross-border funding. With this recognition, the term “Nollywood” started to stretch. What once described films made by Nigerians for Nigerians began to include Nigerian stories told by hybrid teams, by diaspora filmmakers, by global investors.

With this reality, some new questions arose: what does Nollywood really mean in this expanded context, and who gets to claim the stories that originate here, and under what flag?

Take My Father’s Shadow. Shot mainly in Lagos and Ibadan, the film is set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s 1993 election turmoil, rooted in the lives of Nigerians, and features some Nigerian actors and languages. Yet it is being submitted for the Best International Feature category at the Oscars under the auspices of the United Kingdom. A Nigerian story, soil, weather, accents, memory, yet, for awards season, officially a UK film.

That alone is enough to make us pause: the director, Akinola Davies Jr., and his brother and co-writer, Wale, both draw on Lagos, on Nigeria, while the machinery around the film qualifies it under another flag. Why does this matter? It speaks volumes about global systems of recognition, festival circuits, and awards rules that define how a film is flagged and how it competes.

The International Feature category has criteria around local language and majority production in a country. In the case of My Father’s Shadow, despite the richness of Yoruba and Naija Pidgin, it apparently has enough English dialogue that Nigeria could not submit it under its own banner, whereas the UK could. So, a story deeply rooted in Nigerian culture ends up officially British in that competitive category.

On the other side of the ledger is Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe’s novel is foundational to African literature. It belongs to Nigeria. Its villages, customs, wrestling, yam barns, tragedies, and conflicts with colonialism – its soil is ours. Now the story is headed for a global TV adaptation in which Idris Elba will play Okonkwo and co-produce.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a bigger platform, international resources, and a wider audience. But again, the question arises: who tells this story, under what conditions, and for which audience?

There have been public concerns among Nigerians that the narrative might be filtered through foreign production values, assumptions, and market imperatives. In a Reddit thread reacting to the adaptation, one Nigerian commenter wrote: “They don’t like us but will take our cultural history, remove us from it, and package it for consumption to profit.”

These two cases sit at opposite ends of a spectrum: one, a contemporary film produced by Nigerians but globally recognized under a foreign flag; the other, a canonical Nigerian story being adapted by global players.

Either way, both raise the same deeper questions: What is the identity of Nollywood when its stories cross borders? Where does the story “belong”? What defines it: language, location, production, domestic audience, global reach? And when a Nigerian story is exported, is the export still “ours,” or does it become “theirs” by virtue of who funds it, markets it, or nominates it?

But to many inside Nigeria, the pulse of Nollywood still beats as it always did: homegrown, grounded, immediate. On the global scene, however, the industry has grown into something both larger and more hybrid. That hybrid nature brings along shades of opportunity and tension.

My Father’s Shadow premiered at Cannes, making it the first Nigerian feature film to be included in the official lineup at that festival. That is major. On the other hand, the more global you go, the more you might conform to foreign systems, foreign language dominance, foreign funding rules, and foreign distribution logics.

What becomes clear is that the definition of “Nollywood” is no longer a fixed thing. It used to mean “films by Nigerians for a Nigerian or African audience, made in Nigeria.” Now it might mean “films about Nigerians, made in Nigeria, but financed or flagged globally.” Or maybe “films by Nigerians, made anywhere, to reach everywhere.”

The term is expanding. And with expansion comes the reality of contestation: Who controls the narrative? Who gets recognition? Who gets to benefit financially? Whose culture is being exported, and in what form?

For Nigerian filmmakers, the implications are very real. If your story can win at Cannes or be submitted to the Oscars, what is the cost of being labelled under another country’s banner? For the glory that comes with such, would you take that trade-off? If a global streaming giant adapts your story, is your local voice preserved or tailored for an international audience? If the latter, what is the downside of this modification?

These are not theoretical questions; they are shaping careers, funding flows, Nigeria’s self-perception, and the world’s perception of Nigeria. The Nigerian audience still wants to see itself represented truly and not filtered for someone else’s market.

And for Nigerian audiences, this matters too: when you go to watch a film and hear the languages you speak, see your neighborhood, and recognize the jokes and rhythm, you feel “that’s us.” But when that film becomes global, often those textures soften. The dialogue may shift to more English for export, the suburb more “universal” than particular, and the story may lose some of its local resonance in search of global character.

This evolution isn’t necessarily bad because, sometimes, stories thrive when they find a wider audience, but it does change what it means to be local. What we must remember, as a result, is that the local and the global are not opposites; they coexist. In essence, a film can be deeply Nigerian and also international in one fell swoop.

My Father’s Shadow is precisely that. But the terms of international engagement matter. If the story is still written, directed, and produced with Nigerian vision and voice, then the flag under which it competes becomes less important. If the yams of Umuofia, the wrestling, and the mythology in Things Fall Apart are still treated with precision and care in the global adaptation, that story may not be diminished by its international reach.

Ultimately, the story of Nollywood today is one of evolution. The industry that once churned out VHS dramas in Lagos through the Onitsha Market has now become part of a global ecosystem. That is good. However, while we embrace the international, we must also protect the local in ways that truly matter: cultural authenticity, language, access for Nigerian audiences, and recognition for Nigerian creators, because the power of ‘know-your-land’ stories lies in their truth. And, sometimes, that does not translate when you change the audience.

When you hear that the UK is submitting Nigeria’s story, or that foreign studios are adapting Africa’s literary classic, you should not feel left behind or irrelevant. You should feel empowered, but you should also ask the sharper questions: Who owns the story? Who benefits? Who is telling it?

And when you answer these questions, you will see that Nollywood is not simply Nigeria’s film industry; it is Nigeria’s cultural mirror, too. It is a cultural mirror because Nollywood is a place for our stories, our language, our scars, our joys. As it becomes more global, the mirror should not become a window inviting others in; it should remain a lens shining out.

Therefore, the next time someone uses the word Nollywood, you might pause and wonder: are we talking about the industry we grew up with, or the sector heading out into the world? The answer is both. And in that intersection lies a space of possibility and challenge: the local still matters, the global still beckons. And, in between, Nigerian storytellers are rewriting what Nollywood means to the world.