Before Fela, there was his mother. And his mother was extraordinary.

Before Fela, there was his mother. And his mother was extraordinary.

Bolanle Austen-Peters directed this long-overdue tribute to Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti - educator, activist, organizer, and one of the most consequential Nigerian women of the 20th century.

Kehinde Bankole carries the film with a composure that feels earned rather than performed. She makes Funmilayo's courage feel not extraordinary but inevitable - the natural response of a woman who simply refused to accept what she was told to accept.

The film covers her founding of the Abeokuta Women's Union, her international activism, her confrontations with colonial power and with the Alake of Abeokuta. It is a political film dressed in biopic clothing.

Nigeria owes this woman a monument. Bolanle Austen-Peters gave her a film instead. It is not nothing. It is quite a lot.

Rating: 8.5/10. Essential Nigerian history on screen.

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