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For the entirety of the 20-minute runtime for Loose Cannon, a film by Olisa Eloka, I sat transfixed by the potency of the moving image. This is not an easy feat to pull off. For film, there are many considerations to be made in the face of the arbitrary marker metrics of good or bad.

In dealing with the many facets of unengaged Nigerian history, there must be a recognition of our disconnect from ours, perpetuated by the forces of State and corruption. Eloka’s film makes a superb consideration of a national wound, still left to fester in the hearts and minds of the Igbo people, a genocide committed on their soil, and a forceful reintegration into a society that chooses to ignore that great evil.

The fictional narrative spun in the context of all of that great evil engaged runs thus; In January 1970, Ijezie (played by Keezyto), a young man wounded badly by the war struggles to move past the emotional burden brought on by the loss of his wife and child, even as he struggles with the very weight of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Umuchu, a town in Anambra state, in the immediate aftermath of the Biafran Genocide.

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The tale is resonant, and a dark reality for a lot of young men returning from fighting for the rights and liberties of the Igbo people, something that seemed to be an afterthought in a newly independent Nigeria.

These (lack of) considerations are evident from the first few scenes in this short film, with an end-of-war announcement pronouncing the set of the Rising Sun of Biafra, and the continued usage of Biafra as a disservice to the fallen. This radio pronouncement is chuck full of liberal jargon, with words like “reconciliation” (something that has not happened till the present day) and “building a new nation” expressed in the most disconnected of ways.

This particular scene juxtaposes this imposed joy against the haunting situation of Ijezie and his only sister, Nkeoma (played by Nkeoma Umudu) who seems to have either taken him in or moved in to take care of her newly alcoholic brother and his many benders. Their conversation, casual but haunting, touches on the socioeconomic realities of this eastern town, newly reunited with Nigeria, and the story's focal point, a burial, and a cannon.

The visuals are resplendent in monochrome black and white. We watch Ijezie wrestle with his new reality while his sister struggles to keep them afloat.

Ijezie, brilliantly played by Keezyto, does not utter a word throughout the film, his sister the only voice, of reason, placation, anger, of supplication. At the same time, he tries to familiarise himself with the grief of the early loss, a brutal customer.

He meditates on the moment of loss, stripping himself of symbols. It’s a gripping scene and outside of the larger conversation, it reminds us that there are very real people at the core of propaganda and disproportionate violence, not numbers. Olisa’s deft direction makes sure that we consider this, and our place in this conversation too.

If we consider national unity, not as a buzzword, but as something we are responsible for, there must be an engagement of past trauma, just as Ijezie does for the length of the film, finding a point to move towards the future.

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There have been, in the last two years, a couple of independent films (A Quiet Monday by Dika Ofoma and Swimming In A Sea of Trauma by Ugo Azuya)  engaging the trauma of the Biafran genocide and the resultant eruptions, and I believe that the arts, being the soul of any nation, must continue to engage these traumatic events and provoke conversations about them, as this is the only way we will move forward as a nation. We must engage the ruptures; we can only ignore them for so long.

This short, brilliant rumination on national and personal trauma, reinforces my belief in the potency of the moving image, especially in a place like Nigeria, where it can serve to start these conversations.

In the film, the cannon Ijezie must shoot for the burial is the only future available to him for moving on, and as we consider the state of our national identity and our societal unity, we must, like Ijezie, dare to shoot the cannon.

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