Biodun Stephen has a really big female fan base. But the Nigerian filmmaker does not intentionally tell stories to cater to a female audience. She wants to engage everyone and create content that is impactful and enlightens. She grew up with a working mother and finds blue-collar stories inspiring and relatable to most people and thus, this is her main focus in her storytelling. This is also the case with her recent film Breaded Life in which an upper-class young man ends up in the streets of Lagos and needs to create a life for himself and finds work at a bakery. Stephen has directed ten films in the past four years and her current film is a spinoff of the popular comedy Picture Perfect called Breaded Life. We spoke to the filmmaker from her home in Lagos, Nigeria.

Breaded Life is a spinoff of a successful comedy called Picture Perfect that you also directed. Why did you want to make a spinoff?

I am very fascinated with blue-collar stories and maybe that is because my mother has a shop in the market. The blue-collared life has a lot of interesting stories that we do not get to explore very often. I did Picture Perfect and it was quite successful, so for Breaded Life, I created two new characters and situated the film in the same place as Picture Perfect was situated. That was how the story came together.

It is a Nigerian comedy. What is the recipe for a successful comedy in Nigeria?

Nigerian audiences are unpredictable, and you cannot be sure what makes them laugh. They get tired of things very easily, so you have to reinvent yourself. However, the story has to be relatable. The audience has to be able to connect to the human experience. They laugh not only at what they are seeing but at the experience they previously have had that is similar. I try to avoid slapstick too. The actions of the actors should be funny by themselves.

The film is also romantic. One could say that it is a romantic comedy. Is that a popular genre in Nigeria?

Drama is a popular genre. In general, Nollywood focuses on drama and then spices it up with different things. Breaded Life is not intended as a romantic comedy, but it is a comedy/drama and has elements of romance in it.

The film is based on true-life stories inspired by the experiences of people around you. What made you want to tell this story?

It is inspired by my own childhood experiences. I was not born with a silver spoon. My mother was single and raised me and my sister by herself, but she also had many rich friends, and they had the opportunities to make something of their lives but somehow missed the opportunities. I seized the one opportunity I had, but they did not. I also wanted to show the market space. I wanted to show the dynamics of the market, which I knew really well because my mother had a shop at the market, where we shot the film, and I knew everybody. It was also a good way to go back to that same market and remind myself how far I have come in my life. I hope it is an inspiring story to people. To show how far you can come if you set your mind to it.

Are there any particular scenes inspired by real-life events?

Yes, the scene in the bakery is based on real life. I had a friend who owned a bakery and there was a lot of money in the family but none of them had an education. They assumed that the bakery would always make money for them. If they had had an education, they might have elevated the business, but it stayed the same. So, it is about rich kids having the opportunities but not taking them. This was the main idea behind the film.

What was your journey like? How did you end up becoming a director?

I have always been a storyteller. I wrote my first script at 13. I had a crush on a boy, and I began to imagine a relationship in my head and that became the story. I was raised by a single Nigerian mother, whose single purpose in life was to make her daughters successful. She passed while I was still very young, and I had to look after my sister. But she would not have appreciated me saying that I wanted to be an actress and filmmaker. She did not want me to waste my life and we did not see eye to eye and she wanted me to have a ‘proper education’ and thus I studied philosophy. It turned out that it is very useful for me in my storytelling. I was educated in London and then did radio and finally, I made my first film The Visit in 2015. Everything helped me on my journey to become a filmmaker and it shaped me as an artist.

Do you feel there were special challenges for you as a woman in the film business?

I have been very lucky that there were women before me who created the path and the first person, who gave me the opportunity to make a film was a woman. So, were the challenges I had gender-based? No. Women had already paved the way for me. Nollywood was ready for content and it did not matter what gender you were as long as you delivered.

Do you make movies for a female audience or is that not a focus?

I make films for every human experience. Male and female. I want everyone to connect to the story. However, I have found out that I have a big fan base of women, which is good. We are still trying to push women’s opportunities; women connect very quickly to my films.

The women in this story are very strong. The mother and the bread seller are both powerhouses. Is it important for you to portray strong women? And are these women representatives of women you know in real life?

My mother was a force, and I am so happy she was my mother because she instilled in me a sense of strength. Most of the time, I try to honor her in my films. She passed when I was a teenager, but she made me emotionally ready for what was ahead for me in my life. She raised us to be very strong and I pay homage to her in my films. I try to remind women how strong we are. It is also ok to be weak too because that is a way to find strength.

You have directed ten films in the past four years. That is quite an accomplishment. How are you able to achieve this?

Some are small TV films, and they are collaborations. I do the cinematic releases by myself. Contrary to Hollywood, you have to do a lot of things yourself in a Nollywood production. We don’t get paid that well, so we constantly have to be working to make it worth our while. These four years, I have been working on building a name and I think now I can be more selective with my project.

What is the budget for Breaded Life?

We spent about USD $110,000. We are in a special situation in Nigeria where we are still building a cinema culture where we don’t have enough screens. So, we are still developing the culture. So, we still seek to keep the budget fairly low. But USD $110,000 is considered a considerably high budget. When I started out the budget was much lower but then you rely on your creativity. You learn by doing and that is how it worked. I enjoy growing with people and now I take young people who learn from me. I am very big on training and sharing information.

What is the main thing you want to achieve with your career as a director?

It is not only to entertain but to enlighten and tell somebody’s truth. There are so many stories to tell and I want to tell impactful stories. With those stories, we can change the world.

Do you think you have a particular female voice when you write your scripts?

It depends on the story that I am telling. I tell it from my perspective, and I am female. I am not a man, so I don’t tell it from a male perspective. I try to be objective, there is always a bit of me in every film I made because I draw from myself and my own experiences, so there is always my voice in my films. But my husband is also my muse and I use stories that he tells me in my stories.

Some of your current movies are Carpe Diem and Hope Springs Eternal – what else do you have coming up? What are you working on now?

We just finished filming a film and I have a political satire coming out called A Progressive Tailor’s Club. As I said, I am a big fan of working people and it is about tailors. When you listen to the people at the market, you will be amazed at how many stories they have to tell. They are so much more interesting than a person who works in a bank for instance. I draw a lot of inspiration from them. They are just very interesting.