Chinazaekpere Chukwu’s first feature film, Her Daughters’ Mother, follows Ejiro, a widow raising two daughters who enters a second marriage with a man determined to have a male heir.
Ejiro was married off at 16 and returns to her family home in her thirties after her husband’s death. Her new husband, Osato, also has expectations about the kind of family they should have.
The cast includes Ejovwoke Obas Olikuntuyi, Osas Okonyon, Philip Asaya, Najite Dede and Adeoluwa Akintoba. The film screened at Film Africa 2026 in London on October 28.
In an interview with The Nollywood Reporter, Chukwu discusses the decisions behind the film’s pacing, its setting in Warri and the final scene.
“I actually wanted the film to feel like reading a novel,” she said. “I wanted the audience to spend time with the characters, inhabit their world and get a sense of their lives beyond the immediate events of the story.”
Rather than move quickly from one plot point to another, she wanted to give the characters more room to develop. “I wasn’t in a hurry to move from one plot point to another,” she said. “I wanted room for the seemingly ordinary moments, the silences and the things left unsaid. I think those moments often reveal more about people than what they tell us directly.”
Her approach to creating the film’s world also came from observing people. “A lot of it came from observation,” Chukwu said. “I wanted the world to feel familiar without necessarily relying on familiar representations of Nigeria.”
One of the main characters she had to consider was Ejiro. Although the character faces difficult circumstances, Chukwu did not want her story to focus solely on her suffering.
“I didn’t want Ejiro to exist only as a victim of her circumstances,” she said. “Sometimes what looks like a choice from the outside is actually a decision made within very difficult circumstances. I wanted to explore that complexity without judging her.”
Ejiro’s relationship with her eldest daughter, Ejaita, is another important part of the film. Chukwu wanted to show that their affection for each other did not mean they always understood one another.
“I wanted their relationship to feel like a real one, where affection doesn’t necessarily mean agreement,” she said. “Sometimes the people who love us most are also the people we struggle to understand.”
She also considered how the younger daughter would respond to the events around her. “[She] may be younger, but that doesn’t mean she is unaware,” Chukwu said. “Children observe far more than adults sometimes give them credit for.”
The story is set during a period of instability in Warri, but the conflict is not the film’s main subject. Chukwu was more interested in how it affected the characters’ everyday lives.
“I wasn’t trying to make a film about the conflict itself,” she said. “I was interested in how people continue to live, love, raise children and make difficult decisions while the world around them is uncertain.”
The film also uses its landscape and weather to establish its setting. Chukwu said she worked with her cinematographer to make the environment part of the film’s visual approach.
“I think humans are a small part of a big world, and I often like to show that in my stories,” she said.
The rain, however, was not part of the original plan. “The rain was happenstance, to be honest,” she said. “It wouldn’t stop raining the entire time, so we decided to make it a part of the story.”
One scene that was planned was the moment when the characters scream together on a hill. Chukwu wanted to give them an opportunity to express feelings they had not been able to put into words.
“It was about creating a moment where they could release something they hadn’t been able to express in words,” she said. “I think some emotions are better experienced than explained.”
For the cast, Chukwu looked for actors “who could understand the people they were playing, not just the characters on the page.” She also gave her costume designer room to interpret the characters and the period.
“We had a few meetings where we discussed what we were working with for the time period and the characters, and she just did her thing,” Chukwu said.
The film’s final scene features a ransacked house and a destroyed box. The box was a gift from Osato’s father, intended for saving money for a son. Its destruction carries particular significance for Chukwu because of what it represents about Osato’s expectations of family life.
“Osato inherits this idea of what a family should look like, and Ejiro is then expected to participate in fulfilling it,” she said.
“The destruction of the box is, in some ways, a rejection of that inheritance. It is a rejection of an expectation that has dictated so much of her life, including the value placed on her ability to give her husband a male heir. I wanted the image to carry that weight without having to explain it all through dialogue.”
Before making her feature debut, Chukwu worked on short films and television. Her short film Tì ẹ ńbọ̀ screened at AFRIFF in 2023, and she graduated from the EbonyLife Creative Academy with the Best Director award for A Psalm for Abigail.
“Working in television taught me a lot about discipline, collaboration and making decisions within limitations,” she said. Making a feature came with a different set of responsibilities.
“You are building and sustaining a world over a much longer period, and there are so many moving parts to consider. What surprised me was how much of the process was about learning to trust the people around me.”
Now that the film has reached audiences, Chukwu is adjusting to having viewers interpret the story in their own ways.
“I still feel very close to these characters, but I am also learning to let them go,” she said. “I don’t think audiences need to arrive at the same conclusions I did. In fact, I quite like that the film can mean different things to different people.”
