In commemoration of the five-year anniversary of the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, Prince Uhunoma Charles and I created, “Soro Soke: What Do You Remember?”, an audio-visual production exploring how memory survives—or disappears—in the aftermath of the October 20th Shootings. 

The film was commissioned by Goethe-Institut Nigeria under the Art & Country initiative, in partnership with Art Bridge Project and collaboration with NWA ALA Collective. It follows a survivor visiting a therapist, attempting to reconstruct fragmented recollections of the massacre. Through archival footage, live performance, dance, and theatrical elements, the film traces how individual trauma intersects with collective erasure. It critically interrogates the role of media and technology in constructing and erasing the narratives we inherit: which footage is preserved, which testimonies are circulated, whose story gets to be “official history.”

Uhunoma and I combine performance, theatre, sound, and archival footage to examine how society processes collective trauma in the film. We consider how fragments of societal rupture (after Oct. 20, 2020) remain embedded in everyday Nigerian life.

I have culled this short – ‘What is Left of What Remains’ – from the full audio-visual production. With this cut, I hope to hone in on who the main sufferers of what seems to be our “collective grief” are. I look at those who have to do the heavy lifting of remembering protesters who were killed during the demonstrations. Who are they survived by? What weight has loss left on them? Is it their duty to sustain the memory and legacy of those who have passed painfully even as they cope with loss?  

Executive Producer- Goethe Institute, Nigeria; Producer- Oludamilare Kolawole; Co-Directors- Ofem Ubi, Prince Charles Uhunoma; Director of Photography- Ofem Ubi; Sound Design- Olorunjedalo Productions.