Nigeria, sometime in the 1990s: the estranged Ajayi sisters – free-spirited emerging singer Titi (Tosin Adeyemi) and devoutly religious nurse Ade (Bimbo Akintola) – must come together under the same roof to take care of their ailing mother (Lanre Hassan). Lauded as the first Nigerian film in the Giornate degli Autori competition at the Venice Film Festival, Damilola Orimogunje’s second effort, Dear Ajayi, is a bit too clean and tidy for the complexity of the struggles it seeks to portray. Nonetheless, it demonstrates an accomplished step for writer-director Orimogunje as he dives into the nuances of Nigerian women pushing up against a violently patriarchal environment.

“You have to define your beauty by their standards,” says Titi in a moment of blatant honesty about her plight, where the fights for dignity and survival merge. She confronts the raging misogyny, objectification and entitlement that underpin all of her interactions with men, who are largely predatory and at her heels like wolves. A secondary focus is put on Ade’s husband, Michael (William Benson), a struggling painter who displays solidarity with the women in light of his own uphill pursuit of creative success, all before he finally achieves it.

Using music cues to signal the era, the work could almost be described as a musical film with its level of diegetic pieces, both sung and played on CDs and vinyl. This choice drags out the length of the movie, which could otherwise have benefited from more editorial concision. Orimogunje further relies on long, conversation-centric scenes to deliver the story; some of them land, while others remain on a superficial and explanatory level.

Visually, the director pays special attention to conveying socioeconomic class through set and costume design, where wealth and power are correlated with a less colourful palette and an almost corporate sensibility. However, the glossy cinematography by KC Obiajulu is disappointingly unadventurous, even if technically polished.

Jumping ahead chronologically for the last quarter of the running time, the filmmaker presents us with a set of bittersweet propositions that reflect a state of resignation for his protagonists: both Titi and Ade grow more solemn and melancholic in their gaze and expressions. There is nothing so inherently happy about this tale, he seems to say – it is simply up to the characters themselves to find something to grasp on to.

Dear Ajayi is a production by Nigeria’s 2o9ine Films, co-produced by Germany’s Mayana Films, Nigeria’s Depth and Optics Productions, and fellow Nigerian outfit Zynox Productions. Luminalia holds the rights to its world sales.