In Uchenna Ugwu’s short film I Too, Crave Death (2024), a stalled car on a quiet road becomes the most emotionally charged space two women will ever occupy. A mother and daughter, stranded with no signal and no exits, sit in a silence thick enough to break. Then slowly, painfully, their truths begin to rise.
Ugwu says this feeling came from a familiar social discomfort, which is the uneasy intimacy of witnessing a private argument you were never meant to hear. “Have you ever gotten a ride from people who are in the middle of an argument?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s one of the most uncomfortable things in the world. You feel like you’re intruding on something so private. I wanted the film to feel like the audience was an invisible passenger who can’t get away.”
This sense of intrusion becomes an emotional device. She explains that the broken-down car isn’t just a location, but a metaphor. “The car being stuck was an analogy for how the mother and daughter were emotionally stuck in different ways. The stalled car is a pressure chamber where two griefs collide.”
It’s in that pressure cooker that the film’s quietest gut punch occurs: the daughter’s revelation that she knew about a recent suicide long before anyone suspected. Ugwu never wanted the moment to feel like a twist. “That moment is the hinge of the film — not a shock twist, but a genuine consequence of silent pain,” she reveals. “I wrote it to feel earned. Like a breath held just long enough for the viewer to sense the risk, then released with an exhale of vulnerability.”
The authenticity of that scene belongs largely to the actors, she insists. Amanda Ugoh, who plays Chi and recently won Best Actress at the Bantu Film Festival, “poured herself into the role with so much passion,” Ugwu reveals. “She carried the vulnerability in a way that felt painfully real.”
But writing about mental health within a Nigerian cultural context demanded its delicate choreography. Ugwu points out early drafts leaned too heavily toward the daughter as a victim until feedback and deeper research reshaped the narrative. “From the beginning, I wanted to avoid making Kaodili’s death the focal point,” she explains. “Instead, I used him as a catalyst to foreground the questions: what leads to this moment, and what comes after?”
Balancing cultural honesty without falling into cliché required grounding the dialogue in honest Nigerian conversations — the way parents often speak around emotional wounds, the way silence is mistaken for resilience, the way stigma lingers unspoken between generations. “I wanted the film to invite dialogue across cultures and generations, not deliver a verdict,” she declares.
The festival journey has revealed just how deeply that intention has resonated. I Too, Crave Death won Best Short Film at the Eastern Nigeria Film Festival and later earned Ugoh her Best Actress win. Still, Ugwu says the most transformative part has been hearing audiences recognize themselves.
“Several viewers have told me, ‘That’s me,’ or ‘That’s my mom,’ or ‘My teenager acts like that,’” she asserts. “It reinforced that the film speaks across generations. I’m not thinking of it as my little film anymore; I’m thinking about its potential to shift how people see the world.”
Her creative inspirations are scattered across film, TV, and Nigerian short-form storytelling — less about style and more about emotional clarity. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, especially the volatile opening car scene, helped shape how conversation can unravel two characters’ histories in seconds.
In addition, Orire Nwani’s short film Naked Woman offered a template for “how a quiet conversation between a mother and daughter can carry so much tension and danger,” Ukwu claims.
Even Hannah’s monologue in 13 Reasons Why influenced Kaodili’s off-screen presence. “It helped give him a personality,” she maintains, “even though we never physically see him.”
Creating I Too, Crave Death affirmed the stories she wants to tell. “This film reminded me how much I love intimate, culturally grounded stories,” Ugwu shares. Her next project, already in development, will stay rooted in intergenerational dynamics — richer dialogue, deeper emotional stakes, and a stronger sense of cultural lens. “I want every moment to ask something of the audience,” she states.
What Ugwu achieves in this short film is rare: a portrait of grief that unfolds not through spectacle but stillness. A mother and daughter sit in a stalled car, too tired to pretend and broken to run. And in that stillness, something opens — a chance, however fragile, for understanding.
Ugwu turns that broken-down vehicle into one of the most resonant emotional spaces in recent Nigerian cinema through her own quiet, deliberate artistry.