Besida

Chuko Esiri began his career in film production in his native Nigeria before moving to New York to study at NYU Tisch. In Besida, his second short film as director, he returns to Nigeria’s rural south for a powerful drama of small-town gangsters, a jealous brother and sudden violence.

Esiri’s film is also a pastiche of what has been dubbed ‘Nollywood’, with a tale of a family in crisis and how crime can look like a way out of poverty. Among the remote huts of the Itsekiri tribe, BMWs and Mercedes prowl to pick up young women to take them to the big city, but Besida’s brother knows what’s in store for her if she goes with these pimps and gangsters.