Sistá

In a recent movie review, I complained about how nollywood seems to be stuck in the blacks and the whites and how we never explore the greys. These greys are the characters that are neither purely good nor purely bad. The characters whose vices are relatable enough to be dubbed ‘grey characters’. Well, welcome to the field of greys by Biodun Stephen.

Sistá is the story of a single mother (Kehinde Bankole) who struggles to raise her two children, Fola Jr and Anu, after being abandoned by their father, Fola (Deyemi Okanlawon). She manages to keep them well fed and well educated through the years by taking up cleaning jobs around the city. A couple of decades later, Fola resurfaces along with his wife (Bisola Aiyeola) and tries to make a place for himself in the children’s lives.

Review aside, Sistá is a story of how men will embarrass you and just when you think they are done embarrassing you they will make a grand re-entry to top off the past embarrassment with further embarrassment. Sista is beautiful because a simple yet impactful storyline is brought to life by capable actors who surrender to the storyline and a filmmaker with a clear vision of the story trying to be portrayed. Sista reminded me so much of earlier Biodun Stephen works like Ovy’s Voice. It’s in the scenes like the “can you forgive me?” scene with Deyemi and Bisola where the blocking is so intentional that it feels like a delicate choreography.

The kind of delicate choreography that helps the film flow from the first half to a moment with a critical shift. But this blocking and choreography would have been nothing without the brilliance of Bisola to go from small jabs with her husband to an astute sense of impending doom right as the music begins to shift. It would be nothing without Deyemi’s capacity to hold the sternness of a scene in his eyes alone. Then there is Kehinde Bankole. In scene one – shot one – angle one of moment one, upon seeing Bankole’s entire persona in that moment the audience can already tell that we are in for a good one. Bankole becomes the character of Sista so impeccably that you can already feel the weight of the character’s history before it is actually told.

The emotions Biodun Stephen brings into the boxing ring in Sista are the kind of emotions that many nollywood writers have not even began to acknowledge the existence of. Yet, she brings them into the arena and is able to wrestle each one with such refined finesse. Biodun even intentionally ensures that the new wife (Bisola Aiyeola) has a personality that is so far away from the expected ‘wicked wife’, just so that the raw emotions of the moment can be contended with.

In the end, Sista is an emotional delight to watch. It is, however, still just a very simple story shot in very few scenes with a magnifying glass into the lives of its character. For some that may be a good thing and for others it may not so make of that what you will.