Hakeem Kae-Kazim’s It’s the Blackness puts graduate ambition and family pressure on AFRIFF’s closing bill

Hakeem Kae-Kazim’s first feature as director, It’s the Blackness, is the closing-film selection for the fifteenth Africa International Film Festival in Lagos, whose 2026 programme runs from 1 to 7 November. The choice places a British story with Nigerian and Caribbean connections at the end of a festival centred on African filmmaking and its wider relationships.

The film’s official announcement identifies Dapo Oshiyemi as writer and producer through Talking Drum Entertainment. Its premise follows two highly qualified Black graduates whose education has not insulated them from unemployment, difficult relationships or family pressure. The promise is a comedy-drama about the distance between being prepared for adult success and actually being allowed to achieve it.

Two graduates, different pressures

The official film website introduces Daniel Davids as Eniola Baba-Lola and Matthew James Morrison as Jordan Dante. Eniola is an ambitious graduate; Jordan is Jamaican-born and faces deportation. The distinction gives their shared struggle more than one dimension. A friendship can unite characters without making their circumstances interchangeable.

Dolapo Oni plays Eniola’s mother, Moji Baba-Lola, while Kalu Ikeagwu plays his father, Victor. Kierath Jandoo appears as Monica, Eniola’s girlfriend. The character descriptions make clear that the story’s pressures reach into family and romance as well as employment. A disappointing job search can therefore become a question of what a parent expected, what a partner can endure and what a friend needs.

As an interpretation of that premise, the family setting offers a way to make a broad social argument dramatically specific. It is one thing to say that qualifications do not guarantee opportunity. It is another to place a character at a table where someone wants to know what those qualifications have produced. Comedy can emerge from that gap without making the underlying frustration disappear.

An actor takes responsibility for the whole frame

The project marks Kae-Kazim’s feature directorial debut. The film’s own biography points to acting credits including Hotel Rwanda, Black Sails and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Those credits explain the familiar face behind the camera, while the new role involves a different responsibility: shaping the relationship between performances, pace and the story’s overall point of view.

Experience as an actor does not reveal in advance how someone will direct. The relevant question for this film is how its tonal elements work together. A comic exchange can briefly relieve pressure, sharpen it or expose something a character would rather conceal. Whether that balance succeeds is a matter for the finished film, rather than a conclusion that follows automatically from the director’s résumé.

AFRIFF’s catalogue lists a 135-minute UK feature, directed by Kae-Kazim and written by Oshiyemi. That identification also helps readers distinguish the film’s country listing from its cultural connections. A British production can include Nigerian characters, performers and creative perspectives without needing to be described as a production made entirely in Nigeria.

A closing selection and an award are different things

NollyCritic’s programme guide, published on 16 October, places the Globe Awards on 7 November. The closing-film announcement belongs to that festival context, but it is a programming decision, not an announcement that the film has won a competitive prize.

The 2026 jury profiles bring together several kinds of experience, including filmmaker Blessing Uzzi, critic Jerry Chiemeke, programmer Keith Shiri, director Jean-Pierre Bekolo and producer Fibby Kioria. Their presence describes the people involved in assessing the competition. It supplies no basis for predicting their decisions.

The film’s release announcement also gives a broad UK target of the fourth quarter of 2026. That window is less precise than a booked public screening: it should remain a stated plan until individual cinema arrangements are published. For now, the most concrete invitation offered by It’s the Blackness is its premise—a friendship tested by opportunity, family and belonging—and the chance to see how Kae-Kazim translates those competing demands into his first feature behind the camera.