After Lagos premiere, Breathless goes to Cinema

The InterContinetal Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, was the place to be recently, as celebrities and film lovers converged for the first public premiere of the much-anticipated movie, Breathless.

A co-production between Flykite Productions and Creative Unit, the suspense filled movie parades notable faces in the movie industry, including Mike Ezuronye, Uti Nwachukwu, Bimbo Manuel, Nancy Osime, John Njamah, Bobby Michaels, Brucee Bassey and others. Directed by Charles Uwagbai, the script was written by Doris Ariole, with Jenkins Alumona as the Executive Producer.

Meanwhile, as part of the launch for the movie, which is already showing on cinemas across the country, the production team got some of the stars to be at the cinema and see the movie with their fans. While Uti Nwachukwu and Brycee Bassey were at the Silverbird Cinemas, Ikeja City Mall in Lagos, for a meet and greet with fans, Mike Ezuruonye and John Njamah were at Silverbird Cinemas, Festival Mall, Festac Town, Lagos, where they created a buzz.

Filled with twists and turns than a rollercoaster, Breathless tells an absorbing story of a bitter sibling rivalry that takes in dark family secrets, love, lust, murder, revenge and search for justice.

A deep secret links Bimbo Manuel, Mike Ezuruonye and Uti Nwachukwu in the movie, Breathless; they are connected by a not exactly small matter of the unresolved murder of Professor Okpodu’s mistress, with whom Nwachukwu and Ezuruonye also had romantic affairs.‎

Fingers point in the direction of Ezuruonye and the matter is made worse when the sister to the mistress, Jenny, arrives from the sky to work for Prof Okpodu, in an attempt to blow the evil whirlwind open and avenge her sister’s death. She falls into a lust triangle and becomes the trigger for an almighty feud between Nwachukwu and Ezuruonye. The story climaxes when it exposes minute-by-minute the messy secrets.

Even before its official cinema release, the film’s quality had earned it nominations in the two prestigious movie awards in African. Based on his performance in Breathless, Ezuruonye was nominated for the Best Actor Drama (TV/Series) Category at the 2016 Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA), while Nwachukwu’s performance earned him nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the just concluded Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in Port Harcourt.

For the Executive producer Jenkins Alumona, the movie represents a landmark in the Nigerian movie industry.

“From the cast, crew, storyline, directing, equipment and locations, we ensured that we threw in the best available. We gave Breathlessour best shot because there is a need to tell the world that Nigeria is home to some of the world’s best cinematic storytellers,” he said.

Speaking on her experience on the set of Breathless, Mike Ezuronye described the movie as a breath of fresh air in Nollywood.

“It was a beautiful experience; this is the first time I worked with Charles and after that, we’ve done two productions together. We just concluded works on my movie, which we shot in two cities in Nigeria and then in Kenya and Tanzania.”

For Ezuronye, Breathless has a powerful script that is highly unpredictable.

“It’s outside the box, outside the norm. It makes the experience new and I think that’s the way Nollywood should go. I just love the script, especially the twists. We’ve been accused of being predictable, but this movie will keep you going this way and going the other way,” he said.

However, featuring in the movie comes with its own challenges.

“I had to research how people have asthma attacks, so, I went on the Internet and picked the favourite one. It was good working with Uti Nwachukwu; I will like to work with him again and again. We understood each other; we knew when to fly,” Ezuronye said.

Describing the movie as a suspense thriller, the director Charles Uwagbai said, “it’s the one that will keep you one the edge. I’m sure you’ve seen it; it’s something that will keep you guessing from beginning to end. Somebody was murdered and the question is, ‘who murdered who?’ So, it just keeps you guessing. It also exposes some family secretes; like every other family, there’s always ups and downs,” he noted.

O the choice of cast for the production, the director said, ‘Mike is a seasoned actor; he’s been in the industry for quite a while. To tell a story like this, you need people, who can interpret character. We wanted a young man of that age group and we looked at all the actors that we have, and there’s no better person but Mike. I’m sure with his performance in this movie, you would agree with me that he’s one of the best.”

Besides for entertainment, Breathless team wanted to tell a story a story that will stay in the minds of the people.

“It’s a story that has taken three years to develop; we’ve had several writes and several rewrites to get to what we saw tonight. Even when we did the casting and we shared the scripts with them, they were the ones that started calling us, ‘when are we doing this film?’ Everybody was interested because the story is different, fresh and unique; it was very engaging,” he said.

Though actual filming for Breathless took about three weeks plus, but for the crew, especially the director, it was an amazing experience.

“All the actors brought their A-game to set; it was like competition. They all wanted to shine because everybody was relevant in the movie. There were instances on the set where they did some scene and people behind the camera were clapping because they felt the guys were good,” Uwagbai said.

Though he would never reveal the actual budget for the movie, the directors said, “For an average Nigerian movie, the budget was really good.”