by Jason Adams
Sitting inside my email spam folder right now there is a letter from "Mrs.Celine Peters from United State Of America" who is dying of cancer and wants to "donate my funds to you, so you can disburse to charities, widows, orphans and less privileged." There is also a notification that I have won the Swiss Lotto, which is quite a bit of mad luck since I have never played the Swiss Lotto. Oh and there is a warning from "FBI Cyber Security" that I have been dealing with African cyber scammers and if I will just stop doing that I will somehow be given 29 million dollars! I'm not sure how to follow the logic on the last one.
Have you ever stopped to think about who's writing these spam messages? Writer/director Faraday Okoro clearly wondered the same thing, and he used that question as the gateway into his thrilling debut feature-film Nigerian Prince. Who would do such a thing? This is who, and this is why...
Shot on location in the Nigerian city of Lagos, Prince introduces us the American teenager Eze (Antonio J Bell), who has been sent to live with his aunt for the summer in order to connect with his ancestral roots, and also cool off after getting into trouble in school. Eze can't even make it out of the airport without getting taken advantage of. As soon as he meets his con-man cousin Pius (Chinaza Uche, a one-person parade of charm) you know he's already in ten feet over his head and sinking fast.
What starts as a familial drama set against an unfamiliar backdrop - the city of Lagos is a swarm of contradictions, with laptops easier to come by than the electricity to run them with - slowly tightens in to a relentlessly tense thriller as we watch the cousin's schemes breed their own schemes, each one slightly more desperate than the one before. This debuting filmmaker has a real way of ratcheting up the pressure before you even realize the stakes, and his fine set of actors are all up to the task. Uche, in particular, is a real find; if I knew I was going to end up with him in a hotel room if I answered one of these spam emails I'd actually be tempted for once!
Nigerian Prince plays Tribeca Sat 4/28 at 8:30 PM and Sun 4/29 at 3:00 PM