Shakira & Burna Boy
Nollywood was built on speed. In the early 1990s, with cinemas closing and television budgets thin, Nigerian filmmakers began shooting features on video and selling them directly to audiences. The 1992 thriller Living in Bondage is often cited as the spark. Within a decade, Nigeria was producing films in volumes that rivalled anywhere on earth.
An industry of hustle
Those early films were made fast and cheap, distributed through markets and roadside stalls, and watched in living rooms across the continent and the diaspora. They told stories audiences recognised — family drama, money, faith, the supernatural, the city — in English, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. Critics sometimes dismissed them. Audiences did not.
Nollywood didn't wait for permission. It built its own distribution and its own stars.
The streaming era
The last decade has brought new money and new pressures. Global streaming platforms have commissioned Nigerian series and films, cinemas have returned to Lagos and Abuja, and a new generation of directors is chasing bigger budgets, slower craft and festival recognition. With that comes a familiar tension: how to reach the world without sanding off the specificity that made audiences love Nollywood in the first place.
What to watch for
The most exciting work right now sits in the gap between old and new — genre films with real production polish, period dramas mining Nigerian history, and intimate stories told by filmmakers who grew up on VHS Nollywood and refuse to be embarrassed by it.
