By: Curtis Stephen
AT&T’s Untold Stories
Faraday Okoro, 31, has seen enough episodes of Shark Tank and American Idol to have learned two vital life lessons – namely, don’t sweat the competition and always bring your “A” game.
At least that’s what Okoro was telling himself nearly a year ago as he appeared in Lower Manhattan before a panel of Hollywood heavyweights that included producer Lee Daniels, actor Anthony Mackie and HBO Films President Len Amato. At stake? A grant, to the tune of $1 million, to produce an indie film via AT&T’s first-ever “Untold Stories” program.
Like four other contestants, Okoro had some 10 minutes to pitch an original production. About an hour later, the emerging filmmaker was victorious and delighting in a splashy check presentation worthy of a Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes TV commercial.
Cinematic as it was, Okoro could only savor the moment, well, but for a moment. “That’s when it hit me,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘OK – now you need to take slow chinks at the rock and figure out what you’re making.’” If that wasn’t enough, Daniels – co-creator of the hit Fox series Empire – whispered an admonition of sorts (“Your movie better be good,” he said in a tone that surely conjured up visions of Cookie Lyon herself.)
But now, Okoro is ready for the unveiling. At the Tribeca Film Festival this month, he’ll make his directorial debut with the feature-length project Nigerian Prince. The coming-of-age drama, executive produced by iconic filmmakers Sam Pollard and Spike Lee, probes the colorful underworld of Nigerian-based email scammers.
Already, Okoro has garnered attention in outlets ranging from the New York Times to Deadline. But he isn’t feeling any pressure. And that’s partly because the second generation Nigerian-American, who was born in D.C. and raised in Maryland, had to take a defiant stance to even pursue a film career. “From birth, my parents wanted me to do a specific thing. You can be a doctor or anything else in the medical profession, but that was it,” he remembers. “When I told them what I wanted, it sort of crushed their dreams. But slowly, they got over it when they saw my dedication.”
A graduate of Howard University and NYU, Okoro toured the festival circuit between 2014 and 2015 after producing two family-themed short films. But he couldn’t stop thinking about another idea, which was hardly wholesome – as in, a story about notorious swindlers in Nigeria who ferret money away from gullible targets overseas.
As Okoro applied for grants, he was tipped off to AT&T’s initiative for underrepresented filmmakers. “At first, it sounded so far-fetched because I never heard of an award where they just give you $1 million,” he says with a laugh.
For about a month, Okoro – who lived in Nigeria for some two years as a teenager – filmed on the streets of Lagos as cast and crew grappled with floods and regular power outages. With Nigerian Price, Okoro aims to shed light on a country that has long been prone to stereotypes. “My mission is to provide a well-told story,” he adds. “But it’s also to humanize the characters. Western audiences don’t know modern-day Nigeria. They don’t know the people. They don’t know the culture. They don’t know the traditions. So this is to expose the world to Nigeria.”
As for what’s next, Okoro is hedging his bets. “I just want to tell the best story,” he says. “Whatever story I feel I can bring a unique perspective to, that’s the story I want to tell.”
