From John Silas
An eight-minute film about a boy watching his father cry left a full house in silence at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) on Thursday, before the audience erupted into applause.
Ramat, written and directed by X3M Ideas boss, Steve Babaeko, had its African premiere at the festival on Day 5, screening simultaneously across two halls.
The film returns to the morning of February 13, 1976. Babaeko was a young boy when news reached his home that Gen. Murtala Ramat Muhammed had been assassinated. His father, a serving army officer, wept – for the first and only time Babaeko ever saw him do so.
Fifty years later, Babaeko turned that memory into a film. He told the audience before the screening: “I have been on set for hundreds of commercials; I know what a set feels like.
“But this film scared me bcause this is not a client’s story. It is mine. Like every major achievement in my life, I did it scared.”
The most emotional moment came after the credits. Babaeko announced that his foundation would fund the full university education of Samuel Adebola, the child actor who played the young Babaeko in the film.
“Samuel played the boy watching his father cry for the first time. He found something in that role that I had not seen on a face since I was that boy myself,” Babaeko said.
“If this film is about anything, it is about what we pass on, what one generation carries so the next one does not have to.”
Ramat was selected from hundreds of submissions for AFRIFF’s 15th edition. It is Babaeko’s first personal directorial work, a departure from his career in advertising, where his agency won Nigeria’s first Cannes Lion in 2023.
The film now heads to the international circuit, with submissions planned for Clermont-Ferrand in France, Berlinale Shorts in Germany, the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the Brussels Short Film Festival – all potential routes to Oscar and BAFTA qualification.
