Review: Editi Effiong’s ‘Fishbone’ and the bittersweet taste of Karma

Set in one of Lagos’ finest slums, Makoko, Editi Effiong’s directorial debut, Fishbone, tackles the issue of drug counterfeiting, through the lens of its victims and perpetrators while also exploring life in low-income communities and how the people are exploited by the high and mighty in society.

The short film has three principal characters; Mama T, Schoolboy and Inspector Okon, who represent the rich, the poor and the law, respectively.

Mama T (a terrific Shaffy Bello) runs a drug counterfeiting lab in Makoko; we first meet her in a gorgeously lit scene where she berates Schoolboy for being afraid of the police. “You fear too much,” she says to him in Yoruba, and through this conversation, we learn that she’s a woman who understands her place in society — above the law. Schoolboy, one of Mama T’s eyes on the street, has just run down to the lab to inform the team that the police are around. They have been investigating Mama T for a year, but she’s so elusive that they didn’t realize she’s right under their nose.

looks can be rather deceiving, inspector.

In an early scene, she and the inspector have a tete-a-tete: “Brave of you to come out here, no offence but this is no place for people like you,” he says to her. She replies, “looks can be rather deceiving, inspector.” He will come to realize the weight of her words.

In just over 30 minutes, ‘Fishbone’ explores drug counterfeiting, karma, and social injustice and Editi Effiong’s directing and screenplay impressively weave these themes to create a powerful film that critiques, informs and transports its viewers to a world that’s familiar but often forgotten, where wealthy Nigerians get away with every evil they perpetrate, and the poor man hopes karma gets them. Unlike in the real world, however, we see karma in full effect albeit distasteful: it ropes other innocent people into the suffering the perpetrator deserves.

In every scene Mama T appears in, Effiong makes her the most powerful presence, she’s dressed entirely in bright red and adorned in jewelry, but as she unravels, her appearance becomes less illuminating. As Mama T, Shaffy Bello is magnificent, never in a movie has her facial expressions been this intentionally used to serve a narrative. In the film’s most exciting scene, the Inspector (played Etim Effiong) and Mama T have a conversation about conscience, which is more of a monologue from Effiong, since Bello’s facial expressions speak for her. This use of silence to communicate is abundant in the film; a curious but welcome choice for a debut director.

‘Fishbone’ is mostly excellent, the problem with the film comes in a series of post-credit interviews on piracy and drug counterfeiting, but more about the former, and given the film’s subject is the ills of drug counterfeiting, talking about intellectual theft in Nollywood feels insensitive. It would have been in better taste to speak to people who have suffered from the effects of drug counterfeiting; let’s hear their stories. This is not to dismiss the issue of film piracy; it’s definitely a worthy conversation, just not here.

Watch Fishbone below.