Suffering and Smiling

To be screened at 3rd Music and World Documentary Film Festival 19th - 22nd March 2009.

Suffering and Smiling, reż., Dan Ollman, ’60 min.

Dan Ollman’s atmospheric Suffering and Smiling highlights the situation in Nigeria. Lone voices cry out against the injustices suffered by the general population while the country’s rulers maintain a culture of corruption, self-gratification, and ruthless domination of the people they purport to serve. Suffering and Smiling takes an unusual approach to the problem, as the vitality of at least one segment of Nigeria’s cultural history is expressed in the film through the words of African singer and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who started singing about Nigeria’s problems following the country’s independence in 1960, his son Femi, and their family.