Are you ready for I Live in V.I., a social class satire from Nigeria? The project from director
Ugochukwu Azuya was among the works-in-progress showcased at the 2026 edition of Open Doors, the Locarno Film Festival‘s co-production platform and talent development program for filmmakers from equity-seeking communities and regions where artistic expression is at risk.
Azuya, whose short film Swimming in Sea of Trauma was released in 2023, is working on the movie with producer Olubunmi Ogunsola of Nigeria’s Ensemble.
The team behind the project, presented during the second edition of Open Doors with a focus on films from Africa, won the Tabakalera-San Sebastian Film Festival Residency Award.
THR has compiled highlights about the movie and insight from Azuya about the project and the themes it explores.
Synopsis
Florence (23) leaves her small town in Akwa Ibom for the big city of Lagos to start a new job in the hospitality industry, after the sudden loss of her father.
However, Lagos is not what it promised to be. From the poor living conditions of her apartment, the strenuous commute to Victoria Island (V.I.), insomnia and unprocessed grief, Florence begins to unravel. To cope with the demands of her job, she decides to squat in an abandoned construction site of a government building project from the 80s, much closer to her workplace. Her sudden punctuality puzzles her co-workers. Florence comes up with a lie, one where she lives in V.I, a neigborhood strictly for the wealthy, with her once-famous now forgotten aunt. All this to sustain the illusion of ‘living the good life’ in Lagos. With its möbius-strip-esque structure, this surreal social class satire about grief, urban alienation and gentrification in the city of Lagos explores the lost hope of the Nigerian dream.
Director’s note
“We are all just a city.” Florence is a surrogate for myself and countless young people trying to make the most of their situations while dealing with survival in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city. Just like us, she can be evasive about the emotions that make her vulnerable, constrained under capitalism. Like Florence, many leave their home states for Lagos in search of opportunity.
Lagos is a city of fantasies where exorbitant displays of wealth exist alongside failing infrastructure and displaced people. With an ensemble of characters and dramatic situations that are colored with different aspects of the Nigerian collective psyche – our eccentricities, our bravado, the spirit of adapting to the most dire of situations with sheer ingenuity – the Nigerian sense of humor with its gleefully sardonic texture is what shapes this story. I want to showcase the poetry of the city: brutal, magical, chaotic. From Yaba to Oshodi, Elegushi to Obalende, Ojo to Gbagada, we all form a constellation.
What was the inspiration for you to want to make this film?
My inspiration comes from my personal experiences as a young person. As someone who has lived in Lagos and experienced the mechanisms of life in this materialistically driven, very classist society. The story was also borne of my experience of other people I have crossed paths with, young people, mostly women who mirror the working-class background of the film’s protagonist, Florence.
I’ve always been interested in the ways in which society is constructed and how this forms our psyche both as individuals and also as a collective, especially living under capitalism as we are. I Live in V.I explores how this manifests through various social strata, i.e class, gender, social background.
How universal are the themes of the film, and why should people outside Nigeria see it?
I think anyone living anywhere in the world can understand what it is to leave their hometown for the promise of an urban cosmopolitan city in order to assert their identity and their hopes of changing their material conditions, whether the city is Lagos, Tokyo, São Paulo or New York City.
Cities are unique milieus where millions live together at a peculiar rhythm which is intrinsic to the psyche of the city dweller. To an outsider who isn’t used to this tempo, city life can feel overwhelming and a lack of human connection can lead to loneliness against this massive concrete backdrop.
What is the next step for you and your collaborators after Open Doors?
Our focus as a film team at our production company Ensemble is to give the film the adequate development cycle it needs. The Tabakalera-San Sebastian Residency award, which we won at this year’s edition of Open Doors, represents the direction we want to take development in, and we are honored to have been awarded such an opportunity.
