Ishaya Bako (The Royal Hibiscus Hotel, TIFF ’17) directs this adaptation of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s award-winning 2009 novel about a struggling Nigerian graduate whose only surefire path forward seems to be abetting his shady uncle’s fraudulent email scam.
Kingsley (Paul Nnadiekwe) has always been smart. As a child, he would help his uncle, Boniface (Blossom Chukwujekwu), write letters to people abroad. Each message was addressed to a stranger, professing his uncle’s undying love and urgent need of financial assistance. Envelopes containing cash and money orders would come in return but, when Kingsley’s mother found out about her son’s involvement, she banished her brother from the house. Fifteen years later, now a university graduate, Kingsley can’t find work. Faced with his father’s expensive medical care and no apparent options, he makes the uncomfortable decision to ask Uncle Boniface for help.
Now a well-respected big man preferring to be called “Cash Daddy,” Boniface offers to provide much more than just Kingsley’s father’s medical expenses. Still jobless and shouldering the responsibilities of the opara (the firstborn son in Igbo culture), Kingsley must choose between a chance at the life his father fought for him to have and the path now laying at his feet.
Co-written by Chika Anadu and director Ishaya Bako (The Royal Hibiscus Hotel, TIFF ’17), and produced by Chioma Onyenwe, Chinny Carter, and Genevieve Nnaji (Lionheart, TIFF ’18), this adaptation of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s award-winning novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009) is a fresh dramatic comedy about the true price of poverty and the disappearing line between right and wrong.
NATALEAH HUNTER-YOUNG
Official Selection, 2023 Toronto International Film Festival