A quiet cultural revolution has been unfolding in Lagos, Abuja, and the diaspora: Nollywood — Nigeria's prodigious film industry — has grown from a home-video phenomenon into a global cultural force that is reshaping how Africa is seen, heard, and understood by the world.
By volume of films produced, Nollywood is now the world's third-largest film industry, behind only Bollywood and Hollywood. More significantly, its stories are reaching global audiences. Netflix's original Nollywood productions are among the platform's most-watched content in 38 countries, including markets in Asia and Latin America where African content had virtually no footprint a decade ago.
The Language of Authenticity
What sets contemporary Nollywood apart is its insistence on authenticity. Rather than producing content calibrated to foreign tastes or the "Africa for export" aesthetic that dominated earlier coproductions, the most successful contemporary Nollywood storytellers are producing uncompromisingly specific work — rooted in Nigerian urban life, Yoruba mythology, Igbo social structures, Hausa traditions — and finding that specificity is, paradoxically, universally resonant.