Catch up with the latest from the epic Nigerian filmmakers – The Critics Company. Founded by teenagers on their smartphones in Kaduna, Nigeria in 2015, the collective has since worked in Hollywood with Morgan Freeman and is on the fast track to international recognition and success.
A group of young film fanatics in Kaduna aged 7-27 began using their mobile phones to create short Sci-fi films conjuring storylines of robots, aliens and humans with supernatural abilities.
Entirely self-taught “Raymond Yusuff, 18, the group’s VFX artist and editor, says that in 2015 they started to make films and experiment with greenscreens by reading Wikipedia and watching YouTube tutorials.
“My dad had this old laptop that was lying around, and I asked him for it. We looked up video editing software like Blender, which we used to create our (CGI) effects,” he explains.
“We were exchanging DVDs and watching a lot of CGI (computer-generated imagery) movies and movies with VFX. And we wanted to do what we were seeing on screen. We started running around our houses, wrappers tied around us, acting,” he tells CNN.
Using a borrowed smartphone, an improvised tripod and saving up for a month to buy a strip of cloth for a green screen, the Critics Company produced their first short sci-fi film in 2016. Battling power cuts, and unpredictable connectivity their creativity soon captured the attention of the wider film world.
“The target we aim for in the years to come is to make the biggest films in Nigeria and probably beyond,” says Godwin Josiah, Lead Script Writer at the Critics Company. “We want to do something great, something that has not been done before.”
In 2016, the young filmmakers made their first film, Redemption.
They explain they keep their movies short because they don’t have adequate electricity and data plans to upload long films to the internet.
When the Critics Company came to the attention of Hollywood actor/producer Morgan Freeman in 2022, Freeman and his producing partner Lori McCreary produced Ogun Óla. War Is Coming through their Revelations Entertainment company.
The young filmmakers were also given key equipment by American film executives including Franklin Leonard, Scott Myers, and J.J. Abrams – director of Hollywood blockbusters such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Read The Critics Company’s full story in an interview by Scott Myers with blcklst.com
Yuseff recalls: “Starting up as The Critics company we were five in number all cousins, meeting officially for the first time back in 2012. We realised we were all movie buffs. We spent days discussing movies and criticising them, highlighting what we felt should have been done better and others we felt were just perfect.
“The urge to recreate the movies we watched grew the more we met and talked. Particularly fascinated by VFX in films and how realistic they looked on the TV screens. We wanted to also do films with VFX.”
Now that they have the sophisticated gear to shoot more ambitious projects, the plan is to create even more sci-fi short films. Yusuff says The Critics Company’s primary goal is to become one of Africa’s biggest multimedia studios.
“It seems like quite a big dream for us, but we know it’s possible.”
The Critics Company is a Nigerian artist group formed in Kaduna, Nigeria in 2015, consisting of Godwin Gaza Josiah, Victor Josiah, Raymond Yusuff, Richard Yusuff, and Ronald Yusuff.
