Loving Samira: Beautiful love story that needed more depth

Cast: Sarian Martin, Maurice Sam, Isoken Igbinitie, Ada Uli, Nelson Iwu

Director: Chief Chijioke

Runtime: 2:06 hours

Category: Nollywood

Navigating cultural practices as they relate to modern-day dynamics can be a tricky affair.

So, when a man who is grounded in Islam chooses to stick to one wife despite being a financial success, the decision may not sit well with his family.

Plot

A chance meeting between two strangers, Umar (Maurice Sam) and Samira (Sarian Martin), snowballs into romance and marriage.

Umar is thirty and has a mother worried about his perpetual singlehood.

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Samira is an only child who is surrounded by love and has only ever dreamt of a marriage like her parents.

Both Muslims, but from different tribes, navigate cultural differences and personal choices.

Even though it was love at first sight, Samira had only one condition before she agreed to a wedding. She cannot be married to a polygamist.

Months after the wedding, Umar’s parents pressure him to take another wife, Aaliyah (Isoken Igbinigie), a long-time friend whose parents are close friends with his.

Umar agrees to meet Aaliyah, but unfortunately, the meeting dredges up fond childhood memories, stirring feelings he never knew existed.

He finds himself doing the one thing he promised not to do.

At this point, he has to choose between marrying Aaliyah, with whom he has a history, or sticking with Samira, with whom he is deeply in love.

Review

On the surface, ‘Loving Samira’ is founded on a solid premise. Although it struggles initially, once it finds its rhythm, it coast home from there.

With captivating performances, authentic costumes, and a rare romantic portrayal, ‘Loving Samira’ keeps viewers hooked from start to finish.

The film serves as a thought-provoking platform to discuss the issue of parental control in Africa and its impact on individual independence.

For all its positives, ‘Loving Samira’ is not appropriately nuanced. The film heavily emphasises the overgeneralisation of northern Nigerian culture, dress code, and accent more than anything else the director could focus on.

This lack of nuance leads to a portrayal that can be seen as stereotypical and reductive rather than a respectful and accurate representation of the culture.

It may be because, going by the production credits, not a single actor and most of the crew members were not of northern origin, which borders on cultural appropriation.

Even the soundtrack, ‘Memuna’, was performed by a non-native speaker of the Hausa language.

This problem would have been avoided if a creative consultant with a northern background had been involved in the production process.

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Even the presence of a Language Director didn’t help the movie much.

To the credit of the production team, though, this problem may only be noticeable to native speakers.

For instance, Umar explains several times that he is Yoruba but never speaks the language throughout the movie.

This tends to leave viewers guessing whether he was raised in the north or is the product of a mixed marriage.

Even his parents and siblings all converse in the Hausa language.

The movie, ‘Loving Samira’ is disjointed in many ways. From almost everyone’s shoddy attempt at speaking the Hausa language to an outright failure to establish what could have been sub-themes.

Rating: 6/10