Ascending to cloud 9 with Hausa film Duniyar Sama

I recognized the streets that the “Plateau Express” ambulance speeds through before turning into to Sauki Hospital, the gate of University of Jos Permanent Site, where the main character and her friend meet up. Watching the film, I felt sad, in the same way I had two years ago at the Lagos International Film Festival, […]

I recognized the streets that the “Plateau Express” ambulance speeds through before turning into to Sauki Hospital, the gate of University of Jos Permanent Site, where the main character and her friend meet up. Watching the film, I felt sad, in the same way I had two years ago at the Lagos International Film Festival, where I had flown straight from Jos immediately after the November 2008 crisis. Then, watching The Three Apostles,a story of an armed robbery king pin directed by Ifeanyi Onyeabor and shot in Jos, I winced at the sound of gunfire, at the scenes where armed gangs and police have shoot outs over the rocky terrain. As I celebrated The Three Apostles’ win of the award for best film at the festival, I wondered how much longer they could keep making films like this in Jos, with guns and explosions. Watching Duniyar Sama, shot almost exactly a year ago, I mourned the potential of Jos as a location again. There were no guns in the film, but Jos, which has long been a choice filmmaking location, has now become a place filmmakers based outside of the state avoid.

The theme of Duniyar Sama, however, had little to do with location and much to do with a problem faced around the country. Indeed the film could have been set just as well in Kano, the state which, according to the most recent National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) figures quoted in Daily and WeeklyTrust in June 2010, has the highest incidence of drug abuse in the nation. Indeed, the opening credits acknowledge the assistance of the Special Services Unit of the Kano State government. The film ostensibly addresses the plague of cough syrup abuse, which the filmmakers, avoiding brand-name lawsuits, cleverly title “mutuwalin,” playfully combining the “lin” ending of popular cough syrups with the Hausa word for death “mutuwa.” For those who hope to see the film, my discussion below may include a few spoilers.

Duniyar Sama opens with an ambulance speeding through the streets of Jos. A girl is rushed into the hospital on a stretcher. The rest of the film unfolds in flashback with a didactic but dramatically shot opener showing the same girl, Hasiya (Samira Ahmad), sitting cross-legged on her bed, stooped over bottles of cough syrup, and a voice over which explains the dangers of abusing the drug. Hasiya is a university student, who lives on her own. She plays host to her middle-aged suitor Alhaji (Shehu Hassan Kano), who wants to marry her, but prefers the company of her younger fellow addict Anwar (Aminu Shariff Momoh) and his friend Anas (Mudassir Haladu). She returns home only to beg for more money from her wealthy parents (Tanimu Akawu and Hauwa Muhammad) who give her N5000-N10,000 at a time. Hasiya’s character remains fairly static throughout the film. Her parents grow upset over her constant demands for money and her coma-like sleep when she is at home, however they take no proactive steps to make her come home permanently. Instead of directly addressing her behavior or restricting the liberties of her lifestyle, they merely demand that she find a suitor to marry, perhaps in an attempt to shift responsibility for Hasiya’s behavior to someone else. Hasiya stumbles through the film in a haze of cough-syrup high and a series of plots to get money to fuel her addiction. The storyline that moves the plot forward the most is her relationship with Alhaji, who wants to marry her but is concerned about her addiction and whom she insists must be initiated into her drug-induced “cloud nine” of “duniyar sama” before she will marry him. Any illusion, however, that Alhaji is a respectable character concerned with the young girl’s reform is burst when we see the alhaji trying to sneak away from his home without his wife (Jamila Nagudu) seeing him. When she confronts him, sending the children to stop him before he can leave the compound, we discover that Alhaji, while lavishing attention and money on Hasiya, neglects his family. He grudgingly gives his wife only N1000 when she asks for money for a week’s worth of food and three months of his children’s unpaid school fees. The filmmakers skillfully juxtapose these scenes with Hasiya and alhaji’s wife. In one scene Hasiya successfully extorts N5000 from him to supposedly go to the hospital (instead going to the pharmacy and buying more cough syrup) immediately after a scene where Alhaji leaves his wife with only N80 to pay hospital fees for their sick son. The film ends on a cliff-hanger, as Alhaji tiptoes back into his house after spending the night in Hasiya’s room. The events that lead up to Hasiya’s hospitalization and what happens between Alhaji and his wife are left for us to discover in part 2.

The film focuses on the personal effects of addiction, exploring the impact of cough syrup abuse on Hasiya, her friends, and family. The epilogue warns direly that “more than 2000 youth are exposed to drug addiction daily. 70% are women,” and the film subtly places responsibility for Hasiya’s condition on the adults in her world: her parents, for not being more involved in her life, and her irresponsible suitor, who funds her habit while neglecting his family. Yet, I would have liked to have seen more exploration of the background on how Hasiya became involved with cough syrup. I felt her character was not explored as fully as it could have been. Perhaps that is a flashback left for part 2.

The style of the film was typical of director Hassan Giggs’s work. The handheld camera movement and frequently tilted camera position well evoked the drugged world of the characters. Actors Shehu Hassan Kano and Mudassir Haladu give fine comic performances, and for his role as Hasiya’s father, Tanimu Akawu received a Savannah International Movie award last year for best actor in a supporting role .The scriptwriter of Duniyar Sama, Hausa novelist Nazir Adam Salih, was also nominated for a 2010 SIM award for the best screenplay, and the nomination was well deserved. He skillfully transfers the rich language and banter of the characters in his novels to the screen. The scenes where Samira and her friends use the metaphoric slang of the street for the cough syrup and tablets, especially in the scenes where Samira enters a pharmacy to buy the product, feel authentic. The dialogue in Duniyar Sama struck me in the same way that the dialogue in Ali Nuhu’s film Sai Watarana did, the screenplay of which was written by bestselling Hausa novelist Ibrahim Birnewa. I’d say these novelists-turned-scriptwriters are some of the greatest assets of Kannywood. The language in their scripts goes beyond the surface level, sometimes improvised, conversation of other Hausa films, adding a depth and significance to the words that leaves me wanting to go back and watch them again. Unusual also was the way the subtitles for Duniyar Sama done by Aisha Halilu, producer of the hit film Sanafahna, despite a few small typos, captured much of the rhythm of the Hausa. Overall, I’d say that Duniyar Sama, the concept of which was developed by Aminu Shariff and partially funded by Maryam Shariff, directed by Hassan Giggs and produced by Kabiru Maikaba, is well worth the time and adds a valuable contribution to the public discourse about drug addiction in Nigeria.