By Juliet Ebirim
All roads led to the Filmhouse Cinemas in Lekki on the 19th of October 2019 for the exclusive screening and premiere of the highly anticipated movie “Farming”.
The premiere had celebrities like Beverly Naya, Adunni Ade, Latasha Lagos, Eku Edewor, Mimi Onlaja, Akah Nnani amongst others in attendance.
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The event kicked off at the Filmhouse Signature Lounge, where guests were treated to cocktails and then proceeded to the cinema for the exclusive screening.
Written and directed by Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje, “Farming” tells the tale of his traumatic early life turned into a drama for his directorial debut. The movie premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and won the Michael Powell Award at the 2019 Edinburgh Film Festival.
“Farming” which had been in the works for nearly two decades, explored a real-life mystery. It is the incredible story of how Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje, a young Nigerian boy raised by white foster parents in 1970s Tilbury, Essex, had forged an identity for himself in a violently racist local skinhead gang, and lived to tell the tale. It both dramatises a brutal and moving coming-of-age and shines a light on a little-known chapter in the story of race relations in Britain: the practice that led to thousands of Nigerian children like Akinnuoye-Agbaje being ‘farmed out’ to British families in that period.
In directing the film Adewale had to go through all the nightmarish boyhood trauma and violence in details for a second time he says: “A production designer rebuilt the house to perfection and I wasn’t prepared for the well of emotions that it would evoke, as I was immediately reduced to the 8-year old boy that used to hide behind the sofa.“
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The movie also stars Nigerian Damson Idris who plays Enitan and Nollywood veteran Genevieve Nnaji who plays Agbaje’s real-life mother.
