By M. Sellers Johnson.
When I approached Idris (Elba to direct), I wanted to tell a story that was embedded in music and had music as a character; as well as, a relatable story that would deal with the dynamics of family, Lagos being a character itself….”
–Producer Mo Abudu
As a part of TIFF’s Shorts Cuts program, Idris Elba shifts behind the camera this year, offering the touching short film Dust to Dreams: a graceful, compact narrative centered on family, musicianship, and legacy through song. Set in contemporary Lagos, Dust to Dreams opens with ailing nightclub owner Madame Millie (Nse Ikpe-Etim) sharing news of her undefined illness with sisters Patience (Atlanta Bridget Johnson) and Comfort (Eku Edewor). While the sisters seem to either ponder or fret over their potential ownership of the thriving club, Millie is focused on daughter Bisi (newcomer Konstance Olatunde) and the return of Bisi’s estranged father Johnson (played by singer-songwriter Seal), referred playful as the “singing soldier.”
Despite the more serious plot elements involved, this short airs on the lighter side of drama. Johnson and Bisi quickly take to one another, cruising around bustling avenues, shopping and teasing with one another (casually indifferent to the city’s intermittent blackouts), and are immediately supportive during a times of bereavement. Seal’s soulful charisma as Johnson nimbly compliments his daughter’s quiet confidence, as they honor the legacy of their family with a clear passion for music and love. Featuring a circle of other local musicians from TAR1Q to Raebel, Elba’s short touches on intertwining themes of love, legacy, and song, all building towards a beautiful memorial musical number by Seal and Olatunde.
While Elba is no stranger to directing, with his 2018 debut crime drama Yardie to the forthcoming action features Above the Below & Infernus, Dust to Dreams cements his foray into the Nollywood ecosystem. In his own words, Elba denotes this passion project as a film “made because family matters and love doesn’t die.” This penchant for storytelling through music can be gleaned from earlier in Elba’s career, with directed music videos from Mumford and Sons to K. Michelle, and even in his own work as a DJ—stemming back to his late teens. Now in collaboration with media mogul Mo Abudu, acclaimed musician Seal, and coterie of Nigerian actors, Dust to Dreams arrives as a concise, yet warm harmony of benign drama. A lovely tune, in a growing network of globalized production and storytelling.
Producer and media mogul Mo Abudu joins us to discuss storytelling, industry investments, and the future of greater Africa as a major, underexplored hub for filmmaking.
Dust to Dreams does a lovely job spotlighting local talent and musicians. How is music an underlying ethos for the film?
Music is such an important part of our society. If you take it back, even to the days of before, to what music has now become. Of course, Afrobeats is a genre that everyone is very familiar with. But even if you go back to the days of my grandparents, the talking drums and all the different musical instruments that we had, music has always been part and parcel of African life. When I approached Idris, I wanted to tell a story that was embedded in music and had music as a character; as well as, a relatable story that would deal with the dynamics of family, Lagos being a character itself, and then having some real-life characters in the film.
There’s a lot going on in the nineteen minutes, but we had to find a way to bring all of these elements together, that would still present to you (the viewer) a story that was cohesive, but that was also relatable. It was important for us to tell a story that you, sitting somewhere else in America, would be able to watch and relate to. More often than not, the stories that come from our continent will go to these film festivals, but they tend to want to select stories that are about the dust, rather than the dreams. “Pity porn,” as I call it. Those narratives typically set in a village, with life not really improving for the stakeholders there. I wanted to just tell a modern-day story set in a city like Lagos. Which is very cosmopolitan, but still dealing with the fundamental issues that we, as human beings around the world, are dealing with. Here’s a mother that is dying, and here’s a daughter that’s never met her father. She’s got this talent, this voice. Here are two sisters also fighting over their inheritance. These are things that we can all relate to, right? So, it was a point for us to bring all of that to bay in this story that we were telling.
It’s also beautiful to see Dust to Dreams as a story that has a lot of drama within it, but there is a levity to the entire mood of the film. It’s a celebration and refreshing to have that levity and spirit in there.
Yes, it really it. It was refreshing for us to write it, shoot it, post produce it, and to watch it at the end of it all and say “Wow, we were able to capture all of this.” There’s even a single (“Mama”) that’s going to be released later on this year. That song that they sang at the end. It’s a beautiful song written by Seal, Konstance, Idris, and another group called The Cavemen, who contributed to the final writing of it.
What more can you share of Johnson’s backstory, and how was Seal approached for the role?
To give you some more backstory, I wrote the first draft of the script and sent it to Idris. We had met a couple of years ago and were both committed to telling African stories in a particular way that’s never been done before. So, he did a rewrite on it, and I was happy with where the story had gone. At first, I wanted Idris to play the role of the singing soldier. He initially agreed to this, but then said “Mo, I think I have the perfect person that can play this.” So, he works his magic and brings in Seal, as our leading man. Then, he and I cast the rest of the awesome talent, from Millie and Bisi, to Patience and Comfort, who play the mixed-race twins. From that point on, it was a matter of us saying to ourselves, “How do we want this story to play out?” We knew that we wanted it to be a story about legacy. So, it was set in this nightclub. And I really want to give Heidi, one of my head supervisors in Nigeria, her flowers for finding the perfect nightclub setting.
The backstory was also that we wanted it to be a nightclub that literally stood still in time from when it was gifted, to being with Millie the owner. But to go back to the story of Johnson, he had worked in this nightclub many years before he took off to go and join the army. He had a relationship with Millie. The backstory there was that when he left for the army, he didn’t know that he was a father. And Millie didn’t tell her own father that Johnson was father to her daughter, either. Here she is, eighteen years later. She finds out that she’s dying and doesn’t want to go knowing that her daughter hasn’t met her father. So, that’s when she calls for Johnson to come.
For Bisi, she was initially hesitant, but she eased into it. Her mother tells her, “Don’t let anyone steal your voice.” Sometimes you find that you go through life not doing the things you want to do, because something is holding you back. In fact, if I look at my personal journey through the world of media, I had only decided to what I wanted to do for the longest time at the age of forty. I’m now sixty-one this year, right? I only had the guts to sit up and say, “Listen, I’m not going to let peer pressure, family pressure, societal pressure, or any other pressure keep me down. I’m going to do what I need to do.” But it literally took me being forty to do that, you know? It doesn’t matter if you are young or if you’re old. Sometimes you find that you’re still afraid of coming out of your comfort zone and doing the unknown.
In the story there is a tension between life in London and in Lagos. Does this story thread echo experiences of yours?
My only similarity is that I was born here [London] and lived my life in England until I was seven. Then moved to Nigeria, but came back when I was eleven. So, there is that feeling of being torn between London and Lagos, a lot of the time. They are two great cities. I consider myself a British-Nigerian, having been born here. But maybe the only relevance is that I do come and go, and sometimes you are torn between the two places. I guess that came out in the story. With Idris, he was born in London, as well. But spends quite a bit of his time in Africa, now. So, again, it’s looking at that journey. It’s only a six-hour flight, too. Literally the same time it might take you from going to New York to Los Angeles. It’s even in the same time zone.
While in Toronto, both you and Idris mentioned how this project serves as a prototype for other, feature works to come; to incubate creative talents in Nigeria and throughout the continent. How do you envision the future of greater Africa as a marketplace and hub for filmmaking?
I think that’s it’s just unexplored, right? There’s just so much talent and so many locations. So many new stories. Hollywood really needs to move away from retelling the same stories, time and time again. Especially when there is so much fresh territory that they haven’t even discovered yet, or should focus on. What gives me great joy is that this new generation of Millennials and Gen Zs don’t care where stories come from. They are not stuck in the path of many, say fifty- or sixty-year-olds, who are only going to watch a particular type of film. This new generation just wants great stories.
So, I think the under-told stories of Africa are going to blow up in the next few years. We will see an absolute escalation of stories coming from the continent. I am so excited about being a part of that journey. I can’t wait to start telling some really great stories from us. Some from history and mythology. Others just day to day life. There’s so much to be done.
With Nollywood, you also have what I call, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” You have that everywhere. I will see some B-rated movies from England or America and think to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe that was actually shot in America.” Every society has it’s good, bad, and mediocre stuff. There’s a lot of good stuff coming out of the continent, too, and we just have to improve on that. Collaboration is what will get us there faster. Like my relationship with Idris, it’s about how we now bring our forces together, and I think that’s what’s going to ignite the continent.
Idris also mentioned an interest in investing in larger studios in nations like Ghana, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. Are there any logistical hurdles in seeking out these national sites for production?
There are definitely opportunities for us to replicate various models from U.S. And there are already existing (big) studios in South Africa. The rest of the continent does have a need to build big studios. That will happen with time, but I don’t think that stops us from making the films that we need to make now. A lot of our films are shot on location. We’ll create those locations, we’ll build the sets we need to build, with whatever resources that we have now, and make it work as it is.
The subsidies are coming, and I think we’re waking up to the fact that we need to be part of that ecosystem, and that is what’s beginning to happen.
The African diaspora certainly has a global reach in terms of talent, but it’s less common for transnational creatives, producers, or teams to operate in the continent. What is the key for having more Africa-based productions?
It’s so massive in England, the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Even in Asia. Africans are everywhere. One of the major advantages, is that we have some of the youngest youth populations on the globe. They’re young and out there, traveling and looking for adventure.
Whatever we do internally, must generate externally. We could film on the continent, by all means, but do it to the best standards possible, and then let that travel wherever it needs to travel, to find an audience there. To work internally, but then express externally.
Are there any upcoming film-related projects that you can share at this time?
I’m about to open an African cinema in the U.K., which will be the first of its kind. We’re in the process of that happening, but we do need to create our own spaces. Mainstream cinemas may not find it commercially viable for them, but people, like myself, may find it commercially viable for us since we don’t have the same huge overheads that they do. And we have to put it out there. I believe that if you build it, then they will come. That’s what we need to do, absolutely.
We are also opening Ebony Lights Place, which is going to be the first African cinema in the U.K. The second project that we are working on is a streaming platform. We’re launching that platform in October which will have a variety of African-based films, Ebony Lights films, Nollywood films, and Nigerian films. But also, it’s going to have a portal of learning with lots of different training courses. Even an e-commerce aspect to it, where you can shop online, for Nigerian and African fashion. There will also e-books that you can download. It’s got a number of elements that are different. We’re not trying to compete with Netflix, because I dare not. Though, we are trying to launch something that will come to the market in a different way. That will give those on the continent and in the diaspora a different type of need.
The other project I am working on is a film fund for African filmmakers. We’re going to look at project sizes of between $2-8 million. I’m working with the IFC and AfDB [African Development Bank] at the moment. If you look online, you should find some more information about that, as well.
M. Sellers Johnson is an independent scholar and editor whose research interests include French art cinema, transnationalism, historiography, and aesthetics. He received his MA from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington) in 2021 and his BA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2018. His work has appeared in Afterimage, Film International, Film Quarterly, Media Peripheries, Mise-en-scène, Offscreen, and sabah ülkesi, among other outlets. He is the founding Citation Ethics Editor for Film Matters, and the current Book Reviews Editor for New Review of Film and Television Studies.