Nigerian super-producer Mo Abudu returns to the crimson carpet at Toronto Worldwide Airport. Movie Competition this week, the place “The Secret Lives of the Wives of Baba Segi,” premiering within the TIFF Centerpiece, marks the fifth official choice in Toronto for its EbonyLife Movies manufacturing banner.
Primarily based on Lola Shoneyin’s 2010 debut novel, which was later tailored for the stage, the movie is about in a seemingly harmonious polygamous family whose mainstay is Baba Segi, a rich patriarch with three wives, seven kids and thoroughly maintained household order.
This order is overturned with the arrival of his youngest spouse, Bolanle, disrupting the delicate steadiness throughout the family and triggering a sequence of revelations that reveal long-buried secrets and techniques, hidden betrayals and truths able to destroying the household perpetually.
Directed by Daniel Oriahi – final seen on the Tribeca Movie Competition with the 2024 thriller “The Weekend” – the movie stars Odunlade Adekola, Iyabo Ojo, Mercy Aigbe, Bimbo Ademoye and Omowunmi Dada, with a supporting solid together with Nkechi Blessing, Bimbo Manuel, Bisola Aiyeola, Olarotimi Fakunle, Constance Olatunde and Maleek Sanni. It’s produced by EbonyLife Movies, the movie arm of Abudu’s EbonyLife Group, in partnership with Genesis Media Group, Nile Media Leisure Group, Silverbird Group and Flytime Leisure.
Speak to Selection From Lagos, the place the Nigerian mogul was making ready to fly to Paris to talk on the Lumière Summit, Abudu mentioned the motivations behind the massive display adaptation of Shoneyin’s debut novel, describing it as “a examine of the results of the choices we make as girls.”
“[The film] “Actually dive into girls’s lives,” she mentioned. “You attempt to perceive why they made the choices they made.”
Whereas admitting that the premise may not be appropriate for Western audiences, she suggested tolerance and urged viewers to maintain an open thoughts. “It is a very related cultural story for us as Yoruba individuals. Polygamy is actual on this society, and I believe the characters are extraordinarily related,” she mentioned. “It was vital for us to be genuine in telling the story in the best approach.”
Nollywood veteran Oriahi directs his fifth characteristic movie, following the groundbreaking thriller “The Weekend,” which premiered in Tribeca’s Midnight strand in 2024. He returns to Toronto 10 years after debuting “Taxi Driver: Oko Ashewo,” an motion comedy produced by EbonyLife Movies.
“Baba Segi’s Wives” marks his newest collaboration with the manufacturing group, which incorporates directing episodes of the corporate’s hit Netflix sequence “Blood Sisters” and the 13-episode drama “Hallelujah.” “I’ve at all times admired his work,” Abudu mentioned, noting that she additionally tapped the director to show at her EbonyLife Inventive Academy.
Following a premiere in Toronto, the place Abudu may also be part of manufacturing and distribution veteran Moses Babatope, of Nile Media Leisure Group, for a session on the worldwide success of the Nigerian movie business at TIFF’s premier market, “Baba Segi’s Wives” will proceed on the BFI London Movie Competition, the place it stars within the Journey strand.
From there, the movie will hit cinemas throughout Nigeria in December, marking EbonyLife’s first theatrical launch since 2019, with the corporate spending a lot of the intervening interval producing movies and TV sequence for Netflix, which signed a multi-title take care of Abudu’s firm in 2020.
“They’ve saved us very busy,” the producer mentioned, highlighting a slate of 10 characteristic movies and sequence launched on the streamer between 2019 and 2026. “We have had a really sturdy and productive relationship with Netflix for over a decade,” courting again to EbonyLife’s first movie, “Fifty,” which was licensed to the platform in 2015. The corporate’s most up-to-date manufacturing, “Blood Sisters 2,” was launched on the streamer in June and caught round. since then within the prime 10 in Nigeria.
Nevertheless, with “Baba Segi’s Wives,” Abudu mentioned the time was proper to return to the massive display. “After I take a look at the expertise of the actors, once I take a look at the mental property and the way well-known and beloved and revered it’s world wide, we felt that it positively deserved this recognition,” she mentioned. “After we got here out of theaters since 2019, we needed to come back again to theaters with one thing as highly effective as this story.”