- Client
- Oririndu × TBWA\Concept
- Services
- Video Production · Direction · Edit · Colour
- Deliverables
- Documentary film · Trailer · Director's treatment
A two-act film on seven forgotten Yoruba soups, directed start to finish.
The Brief
Oririndu and TBWA\Concept were building an event around Yoruba soups, and they needed a film to carry the argument behind it. The argument is uncomfortable: a whole food culture is slipping away, so quietly that people now say Yorubas don't even have soups. The film had to make that loss felt, and make people want to come and taste what is left.
The Idea
Ask the question out loud, then go and find the answer. Act one sets out the loss and puts the question to the street: do Yorubas really have soups? Act two goes to Ibadan, to the women who never stopped cooking them, and lets them answer in their own words.
How We Made It
It started as a director's treatment that named the one shot that mattered most: a face, eyes closed, tasting a forgotten soup for the first time. On location we filmed the women where they cook, in doorways, on verandas and beside their pots, in daylight with small clip mics, and kept every interview in their own voice with English subtitles. Cut-aways stay close to the food: leaves being picked, stew bubbling over an open fire, dried fish, fruit piled high on a market table. A short English narration carries the argument ("Your grandmother knew many soups. You know only two."). From the same footage we cut a vertical trailer that ends on the ticket call.
The Result
