Since the shooting of Confusion Na Wa, which was built on inter-linked stories, the profile of director, Kenneth Gyang, has been on the rise.
He has disclosed to TheNiche why the he used the inter-linking style for the flick.
Kenneth Gyang
Presently at the New York Film Festival, the film, his first, only recently got snatched by Talking Drum Entertainment UK, a distributor of black films.
The crime drama and best picture winner at the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) swept the Best of Nollywood (BON) Awards last year.
The film – which would never have been made, had Gyang been admitted to study his desired course (Mass Communication) – stars Ramsey Nouah, Ali Nuhu and O.C. Ukeje, among others.
Gyang studied film-making at the National Film Institute (NFI) in Jos, Plateau State.
“From there, I went to Berlin (Germany) because my film was selected as part of films based on food and hunger. There I met someone who had seen my short film and said you can actually work for the BBC; do you want to work for the BBC?” he told TheNiche.
Gyang, who left the NFI in 2006, explained that that was how he came back to Nigeria and started working with the BBC as the director of the television soap, Wetin Dey?
He was to work there for two years before leaving to work with Tajudeen Adepetu on a television series called Finding Aisha.
Confusion Na Wa, from the stable of Cinema Patapata owned by Gyang and his partners, Yinka Edwards and Tom Rowland Rees, won: Best Movie of the Year, Movie with the Best Production Design, Best Edited Movie, Best Screenplay and Director of the Year at BON. The film is about the choices we make in life and how they affect other people.
“The interlinked stories have to do with the fact that I am a big fan of cinema,” he said.
He said he loves film-makers like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and that seeing films like Amores Perros and Babel inspired him to do Confusion Na Wa.
Essentially, confusion ensues at an accident scene and two unemployed youths come in possession of a phone with certain messages trying their blackmailing skills. The action has a ripple effect on all the characters in the film leading to the death of one of the youths. But all the characters are involved in this dark comedy with a lot of the fun in the early part before the gore unravels what takes place in 24 hours.
There is no doubt that Gyang will go far, as he is not resting on the success of this film. He has already done a film in Hausa titled Blood and Henna.