The Story⚡
Two sisters. One dying mother. Decades of silence about to break wide open. Dear Ajayi is the family drama Nigeria didn’t know it needed, and it’s already making history in Venice. Here’s everything you need to know about Dami Orimogunje’s boldest feature yet.
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Damilola Orimogunje has spent years refining a story that sits at the intersection of duty and desire. Dear Ajayi, his second feature, arrives as both a personal milestone and a quiet marker for Nigerian cinema. Written, directed and produced by Orimogunje under his 2o9ine Films banner, with co-production support from Depth and Optics and Germany’s Mayana Films, the film follows estranged sisters Ade and Titi Ajayi in southwestern Nigeria in the late 1990s.
Their father’s house becomes the stage on which faith, ambition, love and long-held silences collide when they are forced to care for their paralysed mother. The project, developed over nearly a decade, has already secured a place in history by becoming the first Nigerian production selected for the competition of Giornate degli Autori (Venice Days) at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Here are seven things worth knowing about the film.
7. In the movie, the two sisters live by very different values
Ade is the dutiful Christian who has become the family’s primary source of income. She moves through the world with measured restraint, guided by faith and the weight of responsibility. Titi, the younger sister, is an aspiring singer whose independent spirit and open defiance of convention put her at odds with the expectations placed on her. Their lives have diverged so completely that the shared roof of their late father’s home feels more like a negotiation than a reunion. The film watches them navigate the space between these two poles, duty on one side, self-expression on the other, without forcing either into easy resolution.
6. The story took Orimogunje eight years to bring to the screen
Orimogunje first began shaping the material around 2017. Over the following years, the script moved through international development platforms, including Ouaga Film Lab (where it collected three awards, among them the Sud Écriture Award), Berlinale’s Strategic Audience Design lab, and Nouveau Marché in Montréal. Principal photography finally began in Ibadan in mid-2025. The long gestation allowed the filmmaker to refine the emotional architecture of the piece while securing the collaborative network needed to realise a period drama of this scale. The result is a film that feels lived-in rather than constructed.
5. It is the first Nigerian film selected for the Venice Days competition
Giornate degli Autori, the independent parallel section of the Venice Film Festival, has long focused on distinctive author-driven cinema. In 2026, for the first time, a Nigerian production entered its official competition. Dear Ajayi receives its world premiere during the festival’s run from 2 to 12 September 2026. The selection places Orimogunje’s work in conversation with filmmakers from across the globe and expands the section’s geographical reach concretely.
4. The cast brings together experienced and rising Nigerian actors
Bimbo Akintola and Tosin Adeyemi lead as the two sisters. They are joined by Lanre Hassan (Mama Awero), William Benson, Antar Laniyan, Uzoamaka Power, Michelle Dede, Chioma Omeruah (Chigul), Tope Tedela, Baaj Adebule and others. The ensemble allows the film to move fluidly between intimate domestic moments and the wider social fabric of 1990s southwestern Nigeria. Each performer contributes a distinct presence that keeps the family portrait from flattening into simple opposition.
3. Music and period visuals reveal the sisters’ unspoken emotions
The film uses music and visual art as active elements within the story. Titi’s aspirations as a singer give the soundtrack a personal stake, while the careful attention to domestic spaces and period detail shapes the emotional temperature of each scene. Composer Ré Olunuga and cinematographer Kc Obiajulu work alongside production and costume design to create a textured environment in which silence and song carry equal weight. The result is a film that listens as carefully as it looks.
2. The film has both Nigerian roots and international support
Funding and development support came from the World Cinema Fund, Ouaga Film Lab, Nouveau Marché and Hubert Bals Fund+Europe, among others. Producers include Orimogunje, Bose Oshin, Ajah Enene-Orimogunje, Zorana Mušikić and May Odeh. Luminalia handles world sales, while FilmOne serves as the West African distributor. The film is scheduled for Nigerian theatrical release on 13 November 2026. This combination of local authorship and international partnership reflects a practical path many contemporary African features are navigating.
1. Orimogunje once again focuses on feelings people rarely talk about
Orimogunje’s debut feature, For Maria Ebun Pataki (2020), examined postpartum depression with quiet precision and earned an Audience Award at Film Africa along with multiple AMAA nominations. As a producer, he later contributed to All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White, which won the Teddy Award at Berlin. Dear Ajayi extends that interest in what remains unsaid—between sisters, within families, and inside the roles society assigns to women. The film does not announce its themes; it lets them surface through the daily negotiations of care, ambition, and lingering grief.
In Summary
When the lights go down in Venice and later in Nigerian cinemas, audiences will meet two women who have been carrying different versions of the same house for years. Dear Ajayi does not promise neat answers. It simply opens the door and asks us to stay long enough to hear what the walls have held. What happens next belongs to the sisters, and to whoever is willing to listen.
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