If you want to understand the shifting pulse of global cinema, you would do well to watch Nigeria. Specifically, look to the two women at the epicentre of Nollywood’s latest ripple across continents: Mo Abudu and Funke Akindele. Recently named among the most influential women in international film by The Hollywood Reporter, theirs isn’t just an individual triumph—it is a reckoning for an industry and a culture long edged to the periphery of the world’s cinematic map.
For decades, Nigerian film was largely spoken about in subtexts of quantity over quality, bursting into millions of homes yet barred from the prestige of international festival circuits or critical canons. The conventional wisdom held that the industry—burdened by chronic underfunding, piracy, and local censorship—had little to teach a global audience obsessed with polish and pedigree. But, as with every seismic cultural shift, change began at the margins, led by those who dared to imagine differently.
Mo Abudu is one such pioneer. The founder of EbonyLife Studios, Abudu did not only challenge narratives, she rewrote them wholesale. From the outset, her mission was audacious: to tell African stories with agency, dignity, and commercial flair. “The West has had its stories told for generations,” Abudu once reflected. “It’s time Africa tells its own stories to the world.” EbonyLife’s breakthrough came with high-profile co-productions—Netflix’s first African original, “Blood Sisters,” and partnerships with Sony and AMC—marking the beginning of a new era where Nollywood could sell not just films, but visions. Abudu’s placement on the The Hollywood Reporter’s list is, in some sense, overdue: a validation of years building bridges from Lagos soundstages to Hollywood boardrooms, and proof that an African woman can shape global pop culture with the same ambition as any Western mogul.
If Abudu built the highway, Funke Akindele is the unstoppable force speeding down it. First beloved as a comic everywoman in Nigeria, Akindele’s deft hand as a producer and her unerring sense for what resonates with local audiences have engineered record after box office record. Her 2022 film “Battle on Buka Street” shattered domestic box office tallies, even as her “Jenifa’s Diary” TV series became a pop-culture touchstone. What sets Akindele apart, however, is her insistence that popular entertainment can carry the freight of national conversations—about womanhood, class mobility, resilience. Her recent international recognition is more than a personal milestone; it is a message that “local” stories, when told with authenticity, can resonate anywhere. As she told CNN in 2023, “I believe our narratives are unique and powerful. We are writing history, not just entertainment.”
Yet, to view this as simply a story of two “exceptional” individuals misses the broader, quietly radical shift underway. When Abudu and Akindele ascend to global lists, it signals a dismantling of that invisible wall keeping African women waiting outside the chambers where taste, funding, and canon are decided. They are architects not just of content, but of access—for hundreds of younger filmmakers watching, wondering if the world will reward their dreams with more than polite applause.
This new visibility brings responsibility. Abudu, with her film academy and industry deals, has become a talent cultivator, elevating a new generation of women on and off-screen. Akindele’s production company scouts and platforms fresh voices, especially women, expanding the vocabulary of Nigerian popular cinema. Their influence isn’t abstract; it is concrete, yielding projects that broaden our definitions of heroism, humor, and the possible arc of a woman’s life.
For too long, the global film conversation turned to Africa mainly for novelty or tragedy, its women seen as victims or virtuous background figures at best. Abudu and Akindele shatter this two-dimensionality. Their work is a rejection of “either/or” narratives—either commercial or critical, either African or universal. They are proof that it is possible to be all at once—authentically local, fiercely ambitious, and globally resonant.
So, as The Hollywood Reporter’s list circulates, sparking headlines, industry chatter, and no small measure of hope in Lagos, Accra, and across the continent, it does more than crown two women. It heralds an inflection point: the film world’s overdue realization that its center can shift, and its leaders can look, sound, and dream like Mo Abudu and Funke Akindele.
The impact, unfolding in real time, is not just that Nigeria’s brightest now walk through doors once shut to them. It is that they hold those doors wide open for all who follow. And that, truly, is a new kind of story—one the world is now compelled to watch.