The series brings Zikoko’s popular editorial verticals to screen through three intimate stories about the realities of Nigerian womanhood.
By Joseph Jonathan
Big Cabal Media is set to launch Zikoko Life, a new anthology film series that draws from its flagship editorial franchises — Naira Life, Sex Life, and Love Life — to explore themes of agency, relationships, and desire through the lens of Nigerian women.
Created by Anita E. Eboigbe for Big Cabal Media and produced by Blessing Uzzi for Bluhouse Studios, Zikoko Life marks the company’s first foray into narrative film. Built around three standalone shorts, the project brings together an array of Nollywood talent and rising voices to tell stories that confront ideas around body autonomy, power, and desire.
In What’s Left of Us, directors Victor Daniel and Olamide Adio turn their gaze to the slow unravelling of a marriage. Starring Caleb Richards (Beyond the Veil) and Tolu Asanu, the story follows Mariam, a woman who, after deciding not to have more children, watches the fabric of her domestic life begin to fall apart.
Inspired by the emotional cadences of films like Marriage Story (2019) and Revolutionary Road (2008), the short positions reproductive choice as both a personal boundary and a battleground within marriage. “It’s about what happens when a woman says no, even in marriage,” Daniel says, drawing attention to the way economic disparity can double as a tool of coercion in Nigerian homes.
My Body, directed by and starring Uzoamaka Power (Mami Wata), explores the silences and expectations surrounding sex within religious and newly wedded spaces. A couple bound by love but burdened by scriptural conditioning, grapples with their inability to consummate their marriage. The film probes the emotional weight of shame, obligation, and ignorance that often clouds conversations about sex, especially for women. “Too often, people reduce sex to duty,” Power notes. “My Body is a chance to reimagine intimacy through understanding and choice.” Power stars alongside Andrew Yaw Buting (Water & Garri)
In Something Sweet, written and directed by Dika Ofoma, a middle-aged woman experiences a late bloom. Her life, previously structured and quiet, is disrupted when she begins a relationship with a younger man.
What starts as a fling unfolds into a larger meditation on age, desire, and the right to pleasure. “This is about reminding women, especially older women, that attraction, longing, and joy don’t have a deadline,” Ofoma explains. The film also stars Kanyinsola Erogbogbo, Oladozie Chiedoziem, Ogranya (Freedom Way), and Michelle Dede (With Difficulty Comes Ease).
Taken together, the three films offer a textured portrayal of womanhood — less about empowerment clichés, and more about the messy, often contradictory work of self-definition in a culture that demands performance and sacrifice.
“These aren’t just films”, says producer Blessing Uzzi. “They’re emotional time capsules. Each one is rooted in the everyday experiences Zikoko has documented over the years, but reimagined with a cinematic lens”.
Zikoko Life premieres July 12 on Zikoko’s official YouTube channel.