From the recurring question of whether Nigerians watch Nollywood, to the retreat of global streaming giants, to fierce disputes over gatekeeping in distribution, NIFS 2025 was restless, charged, and occasionally combative.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
The Nigerian International Film Summit (NIFS) is an industry gathering established to confront the business of film in Nigeria and across Africa, offering networking, capacity building, and forums on content development, financing, distribution, and co-productions.
The first day of the 2025 Lagos edition unfolded on 26th August 2025, with a series of panels, debates, and fireside conversations that brought many of Nollywood’s urgent issues to the fore. From the recurring question of whether Nigerians watch Nollywood, to the retreat of global streaming giants, to fierce disputes over gatekeeping in distribution, NIFS 2025 was restless, charged, and occasionally combative.
In this dispatch, Afrocritik distills the conversations into five key takeaways that capture the mood, arguments and insights that defined this year’s NIFS.
1. Do Nigerians Watch Nollywood?
In an early conversation in the day, four filmmakers and a distributor sat on a panel to discuss changing business models and the need to evolve to survive.
The panelists were Biodun Stephen (Breaded Life (2021); Unclaimed (2025)), Juliet Ibrahim (Widow’s Gift (2024); Where Love Ends (2025)), Hamisha Daryani Ahuja (Namaste Wahala (2021); Postcards (2024)), Chinnylove Eze (Hire a Woman (2019); It’s Our Wedding (2024)) and Anita Edwards (Co-Founder and CEO of Tribe Nation Theatrical Distribution). One talking point was the age-old question: “Do Nigerians watch Nollywood?”
It all began when Ibrahim, while acknowledging the global opportunities that YouTube and other foreign streaming platforms present, raised concerns about Nollywood’s reliance on these platforms. “When YouTube makes it difficult for us, what are we going to do?” She asked. “At what point do we start subscribing to what is ours? At what point do we start supporting our own?”
It is a timely conversation, considering the recent proliferation of indigenous streaming platforms. But the conversation soon turned on the evergreen argument on whether Nigerians watch Nigerian films.
Contributing to the conversation, Ahuja drew a comparison between Nigeria and India, her home country. “They’re so happy with their own content. They have probably a hundred OTT platforms just for their own content. Indians watch Indian content, so if we can have Nigerians watching Nigerian content first, and target our own audience, we then can move forward”.
Stephen agreed. “Indians have chosen Bollywood regardless. We need to get Nigerians to that place where Nigeria chooses Nollywood regardless”, she stressed. Then and only then, we will not need YouTube, we will not need these streamers”.
This sentiment would later be echoed by filmmaker Naz Onuzo (The Set Up 2 (2022); A Lagos Love Story (2025)) during a fireside conversation where concerns were raised about the surge of local streaming platforms in the Nigerian market. “You look at any market in Europe, in America, in Asia, there’s not one local platform. There are five, there are eight, there are ten. And all of them have found ways to build out their audience because their locals watch the majority of their content.
“So you find a story that in Korea, 80% of the content they watch is Korean content, maybe 90%. In India, it’s the same. In America, it’s the same. In Nigeria, they say it’s 30%. The majority of what we watch is not Nigerian content. So the goal for all of us is to continue to expand the offering that makes Nigerians and Africans watch our content. And if we do that, there’s space”.
To be fair, 30% is an unimpressive number. The source is unclear, but it is likely derived from a 2020 report that non-Nollywood titles enjoyed better viewership than Nollywood titles on Netflix for the first two quarters of that year, with domestic titles taking 30% of the top 30 movie rankings. But 2020 was half a decade ago. Reports on 2024 viewership suggest that Nollywood viewership has improved significantly from 2020 across both Netflix and Prime (although with a slight decline from 2023).
Besides, Netflix and Prime numbers may not be a sufficient basis to determine whether local content is consumed by the local audience in an industry that is the second largest in the world by number of films produced, especially in the face of the NollyTube boom. If the challenge is that viewership is not reflecting financially, then, perhaps, the question to be asked is not whether Nigerians watch Nollywood, but whether Nigerians pay for Nollywood.
This is where Edwards stepped in, emphasising that “We need to get Nigerians to love Nigerian content and pay for it. YouTube is great because everybody gets to go on there and watch it for free, but I feel like it’s still feeding the monster a bit. We need to learn to pay for content.”
Stephen agreed with this as well, noting that there is economic distress preventing several Nigerians from being able to afford cinemas, streaming subscriptions, or even data subscriptions for YouTube. This seems a more accurate diagnosis, albeit incomplete as the lack of a culture of paying for intellectual property is indeed a part of the Nigerian problem.
Edwards does not deny the economic factor. “I know the average Nigerian cannot afford to watch a cinema film. If you track admissions year on year, it’s dropped, and cinemas have responded by increasing their prices,” Edwards noted. “I think we need to meet them where they are financially.”
Ahuja, however, had a slightly different perspective. “India went through exactly the same thing,” she explained, “but Indians still parted with their money because it was in them that ‘You know what, I want to watch this movie so badly.’ So, I think we look at it in two ways. One is, do you make a product that people who’ll watch it might want? And will they spend their money? If they spend that money, will they be disappointed?”
What then is the solution that, as Stephen put it, will allow Nollywood content to trickle down to everybody and meet the audience at the point that they can afford? There was one notable suggestion from a guest of honour in a subsequent keynote conversation.
Wale Adenuga, veteran filmmaker behind one of Nollywood’s earliest blockbusters and founder of Wale Adenuga Productions, called for the government to establish community cinema halls in every section of town. “Let’s have community cinemas where people can watch for ₦2000. You can have 20 shows in a day, you’ll still make your money.”
An added benefit, Adenuga noted, would be the effect that such an initiative would have on the current gatekeeping problem in Nollywood distribution. If the government can provide affordable community cinemas, then the monopoly will be broken.
2. Gatekeeping in Nollywood Distribution and Exhibition
That there is a gatekeeping problem in Nollywood’s distribution is a topic that frequently arises in industry spaces as well as on social and cultural media. Even in the earlier panel on evolving to survive, Juliet Ibrahim had noted that one of the industry’s major problems is that “People always have the opportunity, and gatekeeping comes in all the time.”
But it is rarely challenged head-on. Filmmakers do not go on the record for fear of being blacklisted. Thankfully, at this year’s NIFS, Wale Adenuga spoke up, to loud cheers and applause, leading what was the most controversial conversation of the day. In his words: “Cinema owners, they’re not friends of the producers. They are wicked people.”
In the course of making his very valuable point, Adenuga took a frankly sexist position against Nollywood’s female rainmakers. “You men, I pity you. Because, if you like, produce the best film in this country, take it to the cinemas, cinema owners will not take. They’ll rather give the halls to women.
“Don’t be deceived by sales figures when you see a film by a girl making 2 billion. A film that made just 50 million is better than a film making 2 billion. How? Because 300, 400 halls were thrown open to the girl to make 2 billion, whereas you as a man, only two halls were open to you.”
Audaciously, he called out FilmOne, recounting an experience when his film was delayed and ultimately rejected by the exhibitor because, as he claimed, they were “reserving their dates for those girls who have not even gone on location”. FilmOne Entertainment is West Africa’s largest distributor and the distribution arm of Filmhouse Group, Nigeria’s largest cinema chain.
In response to these accusations, Kene Mkparu, President/CEO of KOMWORLD Group (distributors and exhibitors) and Founder of FilmOne and Filmhouse, took the stage to debate Adenuga on the issue, explaining that screens are allocated as a business decision. “We take money from the bank and shareholders, and this money is going to be returned. A cinema will only show and accept products that people here are going to pay for”.
When asked why distributors/exhibitors participate (like FilmOne does through FilmOne Studios) as a producer in certain films, Mkparu explained with a supermarket analogy. “If I’m a supermarket selling grocery, and suppliers are not supplying me the kind of grocery people are buying, I will invest in the business so that my business will grow. That’s the reality. That’s how it is anywhere in the world. There’s a reason[ing] and an entitlement mentality that pervades in this industry and in the country. That is why next year, we’re still going to have this debate”.
In the end, the heated argument yielded little result, with neither party interested in compromise. What becomes clear is that the exhibitors regard film as a purely commercial product, with barely any room for the art or culture of it, while filmmakers approach the discourse from a wholly sentimental point of view, already convinced of exhibitors’ ill intent. Both sides of the divide make understandable points, but neither seems inclined to seek a balance.
As far as the topic of distribution, exhibition and gatekeeping is concerned, Mkparu is right, we will continue to have this debate. Not necessarily because of any entitlement mentality, but because neither side appears to be interested in reflection, nuance or compromise.
3. The Departure of the Streamers
Gatekeeping may have been the source of controversy, but the cornerstone of many of the conversations of the day was the related subject of the departure of the streaming platforms.
In January 2024, Amazon Prime announced that it would cease to greenlight local content within Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa. And in December 2024, it was reported that Netflix had cancelled all Nigerian originals in development, although Netflix has denied that it has ceased investing in Nigeria.
Naz Onuzo’s Inkblot Productions was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the streaming wars. Inkblot’s 2021 deal with Amazon Prime Video was the first licensing deal the platform entered into with an African production company. Inkblot also enjoyed Netflix investment, producing Netflix’s Nigerian original Young Adult series, Far From Home (2022).
Now, with the foreign streamers scaling back investments in Nigerian content, Inkblot has joined forces with Filmhouse Group to launch a new Nollywood-only streaming platform, Kava, with Onuzo and Filmhouse’s Kene Okwuosa, serving as co-CEOs.
Of course, the elephant in the room had to be addressed. And in a conversation set up for the promotion of Kava, Onuzo volunteered explanations as to why the streaming giants stepped back. “It didn’t just end in Africa”, he stated. “It ended everywhere”.
By his explanation, the streamers had been chasing subscribers as opposed to profitability prior to 2023/2024. But eventually, the markets abroad decided profitability was more important than subscriber numbers. And so, in comparing costs and profitability, Africa, including Nigeria, became an unfavourable market, worsened by the devaluation of the naira.
“So this streaming era trouble had almost nothing to do with us”, he maintained. “It was a consequence of the global retrenchment of film and television abroad. Netflix and Amazon did not leave because of the content. They left because of the economics”.
But whispers around the hall suggested that attendees were not convinced. And answers to the “cost and profitability” question were far from clear.
4. Terrestrial TV/Free-to-Air Channels As an Untapped Market
Clearly, theatrical distribution and streaming have dominated the conversation, but in a country where more than half of its over two hundred million people live below the poverty line, free-to-air channels should be getting more attention than they do. So, NIFS Founder, Ijeoma Onah, probed this blindspot.
“Why do films not make it to free-to-air channels after completing all the distribution windows?” she asked. Anita Edwards responded as a distributor, explaining that free-to-air channels are unfriendly with licensing fees. “How can I take a cinema movie to you, and you’re offering me ₦30,000?” she said to a surprised audience.
Edwards acknowledged the option of securing advert placements as a means of revenue generation but noted that it would place an additional burden on producers and distributors. Biodun Stephen offered a suggestion. “Why can’t the channel create a slot for Nigerian movies, market that slot, then share the proceeds with the filmmaker [or] distributor?”
But as Dr Morayo Afolabi-Brown, Managing Director of TVC Entertainment and outgoing long-time host of TVC’s popular talk show, Your View, highlighted later in the day, Nigeria does not have standard metrics for monitoring viewership or the results of advertising over terrestrial TV. In an era where digital advertising provides more concrete information on the audience and conversions, terrestrial TV may be too unpredictable for advertisers.
Yet, Dr Afolabi-Brown insists, from experience, that there is money to be made on terrestrial TV. Hopefully, distributors and investors in attendance were taking notes.
5. Where Are We With Female Representation in Nollywood?
Women are leading Nollywood. That phenomenon was definitely a key part of the earlier conversation about exhibition and gatekeeping. But how much has it influenced Nollywood’s representation of women, and what more can or should be done?
That was the focal point of the panel discussion themed “Rewriting Her Story”, featuring filmmakers Ego Boyo and Biodun Stephen, as well as Brenda Fashugba, the Convener of Women in the Arts.
The panelists touched on issues like narrative violence, emotional flattening and stereotype fatigue, reaching a consensus that a lack of imagination and exposure is a key factor in the troubling representation of women in Nollywood.
With respect to representation in the filmmaking process itself, the panelists shared their perspectives on the importance of having women behind the scenes, with Stephen stressing how female crew can foster a conscious and sensitive on-set environment for the cast, especially female cast members, to feel safe.
The essence of female representation in the filmmaking process was captured succinctly by Boyo. “There’s just something about that female gaze, and the way that we look at things is very different,” she explained. “The world generally looks at a lot of these things through the male gaze, even in terms of how we perform in, let’s say, a romantic film. It’s usually what would appeal to men. So, when you have a woman looking at these things through a female gaze, behind the scenes especially, it’s very different.”
But there is also the fact that women tend to focus on acting roles as opposed to the technical and behind-the-scenes roles. On this issue, Fashugba shed some light on the gendered history of filmmaking and how that spilled into the present.
“Historically, Nollywood was built on apprenticeship”, she explained, “and when you were going for your apprenticeship, it was ‘Go and learn camera’. Because they were going to be lifting those heavy cameras, women were just automatically ruled out. Don’t forget you need to spend nights on set. Your father was not going to let you out of the house because you want to go and learn ‘camera’. So, that’s where it started from”.
Fashugba’s explanation brings to mind a similar experience shared by Nigerian producer, Oge Obasi in an interview with Afrocritik. “In my early days, when I worked as a production assistant, people used to be very sceptical about hiring me. They wanted boys for the job. And then, equipment were much heavier than they are today. I had to pull my weight”, Obasi had told Afrocritik.
Unfortunately, that history continues to play into filmmaking today, and without deliberate efforts from stakeholders to institutionalise change, women may remain discouraged from pursuing such paths.
“It’s important that you hire women, and you don’t just hire women into the apprenticeship programme, you create an environment where women can thrive”, Fashugba emphasised. “A woman will have her period while she’s at work, so she needs a bathroom. A woman will get pregnant and have a baby while she’s at work, so she needs somewhere to lay her baby. And these are the things that will encourage women to join”.
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a writer, film critic, TV lover, and occasional storyteller writing from Lagos. She has a master’s degree in law but spends most of her time watching, reading about and discussing films and TV shows. She’s particularly concerned about what art has to say about society’s relationship with women. Connect with her on X @Nneka_Viv