Oluwaseun Babalola is an award-winning director, Emmy-nominated producer, exhibited photographer, DOC NYC 40 Under 40 Honoree and the founder/executive director of the organization, KOSINIMA, Inc, a nonprofit that provides grant funding for African and African diasporic filmmakers. Currently, Oluwaseun is on a festival run as writer/director on her short narrative film, Fighting Giants, filmed in Sierra Leone. The story is about a mother and daughter confronting their relationship with grief during a surreal visit back to Freetown, Sierra Leone. In this interview, Babalola talks about her work as a filmmaker, why she wrote Fighting Giants, and the importance of funding African films.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ngozi: The first time I came across your work was through the series ṢOJU where you were documenting the lives of young people around Africa. How did you get into documentary film and why did you start ṢOJU?
Babalola: I just naturally had an interest and a passion for documentary filmmaking because I liked finding out about people's stories. I was always filming things from a young age. But in terms of ṢOJU–which was three seasons of a digital documentary series where I was going around Africa and the diaspora, focusing on youth culture and how we see ourselves– that started because I had the idea for years before I actually did something about it. Growing up in Brooklyn, outside of my home, there wasn’t a strong presence of being African because Brooklyn is very Caribbean and African-American. In addition, in media representation, there also weren’t African experiences that closely reflected mine. So I had the richness of an African home, but then when I turned on the TV, Africa was the butt of a joke or depicted as this scary place.
And so with that natural progression of loving storytelling, I thought, let me travel to Africa and show my community. It started off as trying to show a different form of Africa, but then it evolved into a series about how we actually see each other as Africans.
Ngozi: You've been a documentary filmmaker for many years. But then when it came to sharing a story that was really personal, you decided to choose narrative film. Your short film, Fighting Giants, is about a mother and daughter’s relationship with grief during a surreal visit back to Freetown, Sierra Leone.Why did you use narrative film to tell the story?
Babalola: I could have made a documentary film but that wouldn't have properly allowed me to show the past from the standpoint of emotion. If it was a documentary, I would've had to look at the past in a historical context and maybe present facts and resources in a way where it kind of removes how I was impacted on a personal level. Whereas with narrative, I could reenact the story because the story is a hundred percent true. I didn't make up anything that happened.
I could have depicted in a way where I'm telling this real life thing, but I can add elements that more invoke how the real events impacted the people who were involved, whether that be with surrealism, whether that be with camera angles or editing music and it let me experiment a little bit more with retelling something that happened as opposed to having to fixate on facts in a documentary. Film gave more artistic expression and creative freedom.
Ngozi: There’s a scene too in the film that I really liked. The mom and her daughter are crossing this waterway at River Number Two Beach, and the mom is really hesitant. Her daughter coaxes her on and they eventually reach the other side of the beach. And then this random guy shows up and starts yelling at them that they can’t be there. And it stood out to me for several reasons. Firstly, that is something that has happened to me before actually at one of the beaches. But I think it also highlights other issues in our society. Why did you put that scene in?
Babalola: Thank you so much for saying that because, and I love how every Sierra Leonean I’ve shown it to likes that part, because it’s realistic!
It made sense for me to put that scene in, not only because it actually happened, but because I think it really shows how these characters are having this moment where it may or may not be a breakthrough. And when they finally do, they can't even get a second to have a peaceful moment because Sierra Leone just breaks that calm and that man on the beach is a personification of …it always has to be something!
That's what the mother and daughter kept coming across the entire film. Even when they tried to make progress, there was always something in their way. And so it was really important for me to have that moment where they could be close to a happy ending, but once again there's something in the way of that.
Ngozi: You wrote an op-ed where you wrote about the grueling process of trying to figure out what had happened to your sister, Massah KaiKai, when she went missing in Freetown. You mentioned the lack of urgency when you tried to talk to detectives both in New York and Sierra Leone. Globally, black women disappear at a really alarming rate, and these disappearances are not always taken seriously. So what are you hoping will be the outcome when people watch the story about this family looking for answers in Fighting Giants?
Babalola: When I wrote Fighting Giants, I wanted us to have a bit more accountability in how we treat one another and where our integrity lies. Because specifically, with my sister’s situation in Sierra Leone, I feel like there's a number of people who could have helped or even could help now, but maybe because we live in such a society people are just trying to survive, so they’ll say, ‘I'm not gonna stick my neck out and I’ll just keep quiet.’ And that’s a mentality I can’t stand.
We can see someone who might need help or need assistance, who might benefit from some knowledge that we have but because it's not immediately beneficial to us, we choose not to help. And I wanted to call that out.
I also just wanted to start discussions about what we allow. What do we allow in our societies? What do we allow with each other? And are we actually just like going through the motions and trying to just build our own fortresses so that we can live in a bubble? And what is that doing to our government systems and institutions?
I know that's a lot to ask from a short film, but I'm bringing it up now and here we are talking about it.
In Fighting Giants, a mother and daughter search for answers about their missing family member in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Image courtesy of the filmmaker
Ngozi: What was the writing process like for Fighting Giants?
Babalola: Well, I actually wanted to make this a 90 minute feature film, but feature films, especially African ones, are expensive to fund. So a friend said well why don't you just make this a short film?
I said why not because a short film is actually really accessible in a lot of different ways. I had already written the script as a feature and I tried to whittle it down to a shortened version. It took me many drafts to get a16 page script and the final film isn't even that script because I had to recreate an entire new film in post-production just because of production troubles.
The process actually took a really long time for it to get to where it is now, which is an eight and a half minute short. I started writing it in 2022, and now we're here in 2025.
So it was a really long process and it was difficult. I had to start and stop a lot of times because I would also just get very angry having to relive what has happened to my sister and then put it on a page that was easily comprehended in traditional storytelling form.
Ngozi: You’ve worked on documentaries and films in the US and Africa.What are some of the gaps in the film industry that you’ve seen and experienced?
Babalola: I'm gonna speak from the perspective of maybe African filmmaking because I do see myself as an African filmmaker and that informs a lot of my work. I’ve seen that African films have to be from a specific lens to get funding. For something to look like it might get commercial success, it has to be trauma-based or historical based, perhaps about slavery or war. It’s unfortunately rare to see an African documentary come out in the United States that's not tied to colonialism or some sort of difficult period in African history.
I think those films are incredibly valid and really informative and they should exist, but that's not what I want to make as a filmmaker. I'm really interested in contemporary works and black identity right now, and also how our past experiences have informed where we're going towards the future.
And so when I make films in that regard, the access (to funding) is not always there. Also when you go to Africa, it depends, right? There's so much money and opportunity for African films. But let's say you're an African filmmaker from Nigeria or Sierra Leone. Unfortunately to get proper funding, you have to look for a co-production house in the UK, right? Or if you're in Senegal, you have to look for France, Belgium, et cetera.
It’s going to take time because we are still building our structures. But I think we really need to rely on our own structures and create our own work and fund and elevate things created by Africans. We need homegrown African filmmaking in every form, distribution and building the foundations of things like grant funding and institutions for Africans by Africans, because we understand the films that we're trying to make, and it's not always through the lens of others.
Ngozi: And you're trying to do that with the Kosinima Short Film Grant, which you started in 2022 as a grant for African filmmakers and screenwriters?
Babalola: Yes. I started a grant fund specifically for Black female or femme filmmakers. If you're a Black filmmaker, African filmmaker, African female filmmaker, the opportunities lessen based on what rung you stand on. When I was shooting ṢOJU, my documentary series, people were surprised to see me with a camera and surprised to see that I was the director. And I’d think, but there's so many of us out here. Why are y'all always pretending like we don't exist? Hire us. We exist. And our voices and our stories deserve to be heard.
So that's how the Kosinima Short Film Grant started. Everybody can benefit from making their own short film. Whether you're a seasoned filmmaker and you want a proof of concept for a project that you're working on that's longer, or you're a first time filmmaker and you want to make a short as a calling card, I figured that's a great starting point to get more stories out there that are outside of the norm.
So far, it’s been going well. We’ve got eight short films completed and plenty more plans for the fund and its films in the works.
Fighting Giants will be screening at the New York African Film Festival in May.