Synopsis
Fred, unemployed graduate like many young Nigerians, is starting a new job as a taxi driver. As for Akin, he taxes commercial vehicles for the national transport union. They both operate in the rich urban landscape of Ibadan, in which Alain Kassanda’s camera choreographs the multiplicity and perpetual power relations at play.
A word from Tënk
It’s quite a challenge to capture the vitality of a Nigerian city. It involves delving deep into the urban chaos to detect the dynamics. “A soul that does not eat pepper is a powerless soul” says the Yoruba proverb: Fred and Akin get by with odd jobs to the sound of the traffic amidst the indiscriminate violence of the class struggle. Like Fela Kuti singing the famous Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am, this film that borrows its title multiplies the close-ups and metonymies. Its Afrobeat skirts around the story to highlight the saturation and excess that regurgitate the condition of the oppressed. Pollution, asphyxia, solitude – all that’s left is to rely on God. Unless you decide to follow the programme of the revolutionary Fela: Waking him dey find - Palaver, he go get!
Olivier Barlet
Film critic and editor for Africultures
