Ogo Okpue wins best director with a song from The Dark’

It was another milestone for the Nigerian entertainment industry in Miami Beach, Florida, United States when Ogo Okpue, a United Kingdom-based filmmaker from Nigeria was adjudged the Best Director in a tie with Bryan Keith Montgomery Jnr, at the 2023 American Black Film Festival Award for his film, A Song From The Dark.

The American Black Film Festival, currently at its 27th annual edition is the biggest black film festival in the world, created to highlight audio-visual works of black origin. Okpue’s work, which also won the Best Actor category at the American Black Film Festival had 6 nominations at the 2022 Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in Nigeria while winning Okpue, the Best Director for First Feature Film.

Starring Nollywood’s Nse Ikpe Etim, and Wale Ojo alongside Ghanaian-born Vanessa Vanderpuye, Octavia Gilmore, and Dean Kilby amongst others, the film is a fantasy-horror, positioned to project heroes and heroines of African traditional mysticism.

Okpue, whose short films like “Saving Cain,” “Cat Face” have been recognised and screened at major film festivals around the world, described the feat at the American Black Film Festival as humbling for him, having put three years of work into the film.

“Winning at the largest black film festival in the world for our film was an absolute honour. Three years grafting in the dark, and then within a year, you end up in Miami Beach accepting two big prestigious awards, as well as, Best Director at Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles?

God did it! Congrats to my lead actress for winning Best Actor as well. Congrats to all my fellow 2023 ABFF winners! I will say many thanks to Jeff and Nicole Friday, for birthing ABFF and giving diverse voices such an amazing platform.”

Speaking on the inspiration for the film, Okpue says it dates back to his grandmother. “The story dates back to a certain period of my childhood when my family would visit my grandmother in our village. She happened to be a well-respected traditionalist.

Tales of her would intrigue us and as I grew older, I regretted not knowing her more. She was an enigma and I wondered what it would have been like if some of her tales were captured in books. The world of African mysticism has not been explored enough in world cinema.

And most times it is vilified. I think in Africa, our superheroes have slept long enough, African stories are as diverse and as entertaining as the continent itself. So, I thought ‘why not add more African heroes to the fictional world of cinema? That is what we have achieved with this movie,” he surmised.