Ngozi Onwurah Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Ngozi Onwurah
Directing
Biography
Graduated as a director from the UK's National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield. Her first short film, 'Coffee Coloured Children', achieved international film festival success and won first prize in the BBC Showreel competition. More success and awards followed with further dramas and documentaries for a number of UK and international broadcasters including 'South of the Border', a groundbreaking series for the BBC. She was awarded the prestigious honour of special retrospective screenings at the New York Film Festival, including 'The Body Beautiful', one of the UK's most commercially successful short films. Her first feature film, 'Welcome II The Terrordome', won first prize at the Birmingham International Film Festival, the Cologne Film Festival and the audience prize at the Verona Film Festival. Ngozi has also directed an episode of 'Heartbeat' for ITV, the top-rated UK drama series with an audience of over 18 million.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Coffee Coloured Children
Coffee-Colored Children is an autobiographical portrayal of Ngozi's, and her brother's, sad welcome to the world where the color of your skin dictates the amount of respect & love you receive.
Sisters of the Screen - African Women in the Cinema
Exploring the extraordinary contributions of women filmmakers from Africa and the diaspora, Beti Ellerson’s engaging debut intersperses interviews with such acclaimed women directors as Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror, Anne Mungai, Fanta Régina Nacro and Ngozi Onwurah with footage from their seminal work. With power and nuance, Ellerson also confronts the thorny question of cultural authenticity by revisiting the legendary 1991 FESPACO (Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television of Ouagadougou), in which diasporian women were asked to leave a meeting intended for African woman only. This film is both a valuable anthology and a fitting homage to the pioneers and new talents of African cinema.
Production
Coffee Coloured Children
Coffee-Colored Children is an autobiographical portrayal of Ngozi's, and her brother's, sad welcome to the world where the color of your skin dictates the amount of respect & love you receive.
Welcome II the Terrordome
Spike and his sister Anjela live in the Terrordome, a huge ghetto that all the blacks have been forced to live in. Jodie, Spike's pregnant white girlfriend, ran away from an abusive white boyfriend who, after seeing her with Spike, sets up a trap for her. Spike's 11-year old nephew Hector dies as a result of this trap, and Anjela, finding the body of her son, goes on a police-killing rampage. Her apprehension sets off tension between Spike and his brother-in-law, as a race war broods inside the Terrordome.
The Body Beautiful
This bold, stunning exploration of a white mother who undergoes a radical mastectomy and her Black daughter who embarks on a modeling career reveals the profound effects of body image and the strain of racial and sexual identity on their charged, intensely loving bond. At the heart of Onwurah’s brave excursion into her mother’s scorned sexuality is a provocative interweaving of memory and fantasy. The filmmaker plumbs the depths of maternal strength and daughterly devotion in an unforgettable tribute starring her real-life mother, Madge Onwurah.
Welcome II the Terrordome
Spike and his sister Anjela live in the Terrordome, a huge ghetto that all the blacks have been forced to live in. Jodie, Spike's pregnant white girlfriend, ran away from an abusive white boyfriend who, after seeing her with Spike, sets up a trap for her. Spike's 11-year old nephew Hector dies as a result of this trap, and Anjela, finding the body of her son, goes on a police-killing rampage. Her apprehension sets off tension between Spike and his brother-in-law, as a race war broods inside the Terrordome.
The Body Beautiful
This bold, stunning exploration of a white mother who undergoes a radical mastectomy and her Black daughter who embarks on a modeling career reveals the profound effects of body image and the strain of racial and sexual identity on their charged, intensely loving bond. At the heart of Onwurah’s brave excursion into her mother’s scorned sexuality is a provocative interweaving of memory and fantasy. The filmmaker plumbs the depths of maternal strength and daughterly devotion in an unforgettable tribute starring her real-life mother, Madge Onwurah.
Shoot the Messenger
Shoot the Messenger follows one man's painful journey towards self-discovery. On the way he finds both his own attitudes and the expectations of his community challenged.
Coffee Coloured Children
Coffee-Colored Children is an autobiographical portrayal of Ngozi's, and her brother's, sad welcome to the world where the color of your skin dictates the amount of respect & love you receive.
Flight of the Swan
A young girl leaves her Nigerian village to attend a ballet school in England. Fascinated by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she dreams of performing as lead ballerina Princess Odette, but the girls in her close-minded ballet school mock her ideas of a 'black swan'.
Flight of the Swan
A young girl leaves her Nigerian village to attend a ballet school in England. Fascinated by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, she dreams of performing as lead ballerina Princess Odette, but the girls in her close-minded ballet school mock her ideas of a 'black swan'.
White Men Are Cracking Up
Maisie Blue is an enigmatic black widow figure under investigation by detective Margrave for her involvement in the suicides of successful white men. Through the blurred lines of perception and reality, the myth of the Black feminine mystique is explored under the guise of a murder mystery. The film explores the fetishization of Black women as a manifestation of white male insecurity.
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