Kannywood: Northern Nigeria’s film industry chasing global fame

Long overshadowed by south Nigeria's Nollywood, filmmakers in the north of Africa's cinema powerhouse are pushing the boundaries of censorship in search of international recognition.

The Kannywood cinema industry, named after Nigeria’s northern Kano state, produces about 200 films a month.

Young Kannywood creatives hope to expand their audience beyond Nigeria’s borders.

"Kannywood is aspiring to be Nollywood right now, first before it branches out," said actor Adam Garba.

"At Nollywood they have more budget, more equipment, they have more sponsors, more investors, and even foreigner tend to come in the country to shoot mostly in Lagos, mostly in Abuja. So I think that's what Kano is aspiring to be," he added.

Modernity and censorship

With some 80 million speakers of the Hausa language spread across west and central Africa, not to mention the vast Nigerian diaspora, Kannywood's potential market is huge.

Yet reconciling international expectations with local constraints is no easy task: Islam's sharia law code runs alongside common law in Kano state, the bustling cultural hub of northern Nigeria, and a government censor board reviews music and film production.

Filmmakers still find a way to focus on the same themes that dominate Nollywood: love, vengeance and treason all make good fodder for the at times over-the-top melodrama Nigerian movies are known for.

But nudity, "sexual scenes" as well as "content that is contrary to customs, traditions, and religion" are all out of bounds, said Abba El-Mustapha, an actor and director who also serves as the executive secretary of the Kano State film censorship board.

Hausa-focused streamers

To spread their work, filmmakers can count on a new, dedicated streaming service named Arewaflix, from Abdurrahman Muhammad Amart, a Nigerian production company CEO.

"We decided to come up with our own platform, at our own level, using our own resources, to enable us to stream our northern films all over Nigeria," said Amart.

Arewaflix will be a service "not only for Hausa films, but also for films in other languages from northern Nigeria," including Nupe and Kanuri, Amart added.

Subtitles are planned in English, French and Arabic. It's not the first such attempt: Northflix, another Hausa-focused effort, shuttered in 2023 amid slow growth.

Kannywood is known for its scrappiness, but the key to international growth is better production equipment, said director Umar Abdulmalik.

With top-notch stories and production, the language barrier won't be an issue, he predicted, noting how India's Bollywood has become a media staple in Nigeria, despite many viewers not speaking English or Hindi, "because they are carried away by the characters' emotions."

For now, though, there's one tradition that Kannywood seems set to stick with: doing more with less.

With scarce resources and the prospect of censorship, young filmmakers are facing a number of challenges, but their extensive creativity is a powerful driver for Kannywood.