Following its premiere, Birdie entered the global festival conversation as one of the African-linked narratives selected for the U.S. Fiction Short Films programme at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, held from January 22 to February 1, 2026, where the 21-minute short made its world premiere. Directed, written, and produced by Nigerian-American filmmaker Praise Odigie Paige, and produced alongside Yety Akinola, Noni Limar, and Nat Majette, the film follows a Nigerian refugee family navigating displacement in 1970s rural Virginia after the Biafran War.
Through a collaboration between Nollycritic and eFilmHub, we spoke with director Praise Odigie Paige and producer and costume designer Yety Akinola about the making of Birdie, the film’s emotional/visual language, the challenges of building its world, and the questions of migration, identity, and memory that shape its heart.
In Conversation with Praise Odigie Paige
(Writer, Director and Producer)
Q: To begin, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background in filmmaking and how the story of Birdie came about?
My name is Praise. I’m a writer, director and producer
I’ve also been fortunate to work in spaces where I mentor younger creatives and help guide their work.
Film actually found me in a way. I started out writing poetry when I was younger. I was trying to find language for experiences that felt difficult to express. I even thought about writing a novel when I was a teenager.
When I went to college, I was initially studying to become a doctor because that felt like the expected path. Being African, I had convinced myself that this was the direction my life had to take.
But I ended up taking a class that completely changed my life. It introduced me to filmmaking, and I realised it combined everything I loved about poetry and literature with the visual language I had always imagined in my mind.
Before that moment, I had never really considered that someone like me could be the person directing films. Discovering that possibility changed everything.
After that, life took its usual turns. As a first-generation immigrant and a first daughter, there were many responsibilities and practical realities to navigate. For a while, creative expression had to exist on the margins of my life.
Eventually I reached a point where I realised that not expressing myself artistically felt unsustainable. I had experimented with storytelling in my early twenties, but I recognised that there was also a skill gap that required time, mentorship and practice.
Over the next decade I tried to create opportunities to develop those skills without needing the enormous resources that filmmaking usually requires.
Birdie came out of that moment of reflection. I was approaching thirty and asking myself what I truly wanted to commit to as an artist. In many ways the film became a gift to myself. It was a way of investing in something that once felt unrealistic but had always been deeply important to me.
Instead of trying to make the film I thought people expected from me, I decided to make the film I personally wanted to see. A film that came from the heart and reflected my own artistic instincts.
That’s how Birdie was born.
Q: One of the most striking aspects of the film is its use of silence and stillness. What drew you to that restrained style of storytelling?
Many of the films that have stayed with me are films that create space.
Those quiet spaces allow experiences that are difficult to articulate to unfold naturally. That’s where I personally fell in love with cinema.
I also wanted to give that type of storytelling to audiences who rarely see themselves represented in that space. It wasn’t necessarily an act of rebellion. It simply felt right for the characters and the world they inhabit.
There is a kind of emotional restraint that I observed growing up in Igbo Catholic culture. That restraint shapes how people move, speak and express themselves.
The characters in Birdie exist within that emotional structure. The quiet characters I remember most vividly from my childhood were often the ones who spoke the least. They were the girls who were overlooked.
In many ways creating space for those characters is a form of care for the younger version of myself who was also quiet and observant.
At the same time, the story itself required that pacing. The characters are living in a kind of liminal space. Their lives are paused. They are waiting for something to happen that will determine their future.
When you exist in that kind of uncertainty, time stretches. The silence becomes heavy. That emotional tension shaped the rhythm of the film.
Q: How did you work with the actors to create performances that feel internal and lived-in rather than overly expressive?
Casting played a big role in that process.
When you read Birdie on paper, you might imagine someone who is very bold and outwardly rebellious. But when I met Precious there was something about her quiet presence that really resonated with me.
She felt like someone who often observes rather than dominates the room, and that contradiction interested me. I wanted to see how a rebellious spirit might exist within someone who is naturally more introspective.
Precious brought a lot of herself to the role while also exploring experiences that were new to her. She was incredibly committed to the character and very thoughtful about the emotional journey of the film.
The physical environment also helped shape the performances. Before we began filming, we spent time simply being in the space. We wanted the actors to feel the environment rather than immediately jumping into scenes.
I grew up in a rural area in Ibara, and I remember the feeling of endless space and a slower rhythm of life. That kind of environment influences how people move and how they express themselves.
Allowing the actors to experience that space helped them naturally settle into a quieter emotional register.
Q: How did you come up with the character names Birdie, English and Celeste?
Birdie’s actual name is Bernadette. She gives herself the nickname Birdie.
English’s real name is Elizabeth. The nickname English reflects something about her personality. She is very structured, very disciplined, and in my mind she would have been someone who excelled academically.
The name also carries a subtle reference to colonial influence. Naming a child English reflects the historical presence of colonial culture in Nigeria and the ways those influences shape identity.
Birdie represents the opposite energy. She is a dreamer and an escapist. Her nickname reflects that desire to imagine a different life.
Celeste was simply a name that felt right. There is something almost celestial in the way the character carries her devotion and her sense of responsibility.
Sometimes names arrive intuitively. They either feel right for the character or they don’t.
Q: The pacing of the film feels very deliberate. How did you decide when to hold on to a moment and when to move forward?
A lot of that rhythm came directly from the performances.
When we watched the footage, many of the small gestures felt meaningful enough that they deserved time. Those micro-expressions were communicating as much as dialogue would.
The script itself was very visual, which helped everyone understand the emotional language of the film from the beginning.
My role as a director was to allow the actors to focus on their characters’ internal worlds rather than worrying about the broader structure of the film.
The editing process also played an important role. My editor and I discussed films that have a very patient rhythm, films that allow moments to breathe rather than cutting quickly between shots.
We also approached the camera composition in a very intentional way. Instead of capturing many different angles, we focused on a small number of carefully composed frames.
That approach naturally shaped the pacing of the film.
Q: How did you balance your own creative vision with the collaborative nature of filmmaking?
Collaboration is the core of filmmaking.
People are not simply vessels for a director’s ideas. They bring their own perspectives and interpretations to the project.
A film is like a painting. The final image depends on how each person contributes their brushstroke.
For me, the key was choosing collaborators who understood the spirit of the film. Once that foundation was in place, I could remain open to suggestions while still trusting my own instincts when something felt essential to the story.
There were moments during rehearsals or filming where you simply know that a particular take is right. Learning to recognise and trust those moments is part of the process.
Q: Finally, when audiences leave the cinema after watching Birdie, what do you hope stays with them?
My answer to that question changes sometimes, but right now I hope the characters stay with them.
Empathy begins when you feel that you truly understand another person’s experience. When audiences spend time with characters like English, Birdie and Celeste, they begin to see the world through those perspectives.
In a time when xenophobia and division are becoming more visible globally, stories like this can remind people of our shared humanity.
If viewers leave the film thinking about English and what it means to carry responsibility at such a young age, or thinking about Birdie and her search for freedom, or thinking about Celeste and the difficult choices a mother must make to protect her children, then the film has done something meaningful.
Ultimately I hope the story encourages a little more empathy, and perhaps even a little more courage in how we see one another.
In Conversation with Yeti Akinola
(Producer and Costume Designer)
Q: Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your background, how you began producing, and how you became involved with Birdie?
Yeti Akinola:
Praise, our director, actually reached out to me to costume design Birdie. I’m represented by United Talent Agency worldwide for costume design, and she reached out with this beautiful deck and a gorgeous script and said, “Naija girl, Naija girl, let’s get it together. Let’s make something beautiful.”
And I was like, yes, one hundred percent.
Around that time I was also going through a period of reflection in my career. I would say COVID was probably the big turning point, when everything shut down. I started thinking internally about what the next step was for me and what kind of projects I wanted to invest in. Receiving scripts like Birdie, which I felt deserved to be made and deserved to be heard, really pushed that thinking further.
It can be frustrating to always wait for someone else to greenlight a story or decide that it is worth the money and the time. Birdie was actually the second script I received during that period where the project had all the right pieces. It had a beautiful story, but it didn’t yet have the funding or a producer to move it to the next stage.
The first project I had worked on in that capacity was The Incredible Sensational Fiancé of Chez Ajayi, which premiered at AFRIFF in Lagos in November 2024 and then screened internationally throughout the year. We went to Fame Week in Cape Town, Hampton International Film Festival, Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival, SeriesFest, all these Oscar-qualifying festivals.
That project was also brought to me as a designer. The director, Abis Yakimi, was struggling to find a producer and to raise the money. I think everyone reaches a point in their career where they decide how much they want to invest in stories that matter to them creatively and emotionally.
So while I was on the festival circuit with that short film, I received Birdie. We were getting close to the wire in terms of shooting, and I thought, I would love to step in. This project deserves to be shown. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. I believed we could fundraise the money, find the actors and fly everyone in.
We shot in Virginia, so it was a complete location shoot. It involved getting everyone there, organising the logistics, and bringing the team together. That’s how I came on board as both producer and costume designer.
Q: Did you rely on crowdfunding, or were you able to find other sources of funding?
Yeti Akinola:
Birdie was primarily self-funded by the director. Praise came into the project saying that this was a story that had been on her heart for years and that it stemmed from her own personal story as an immigrant from Nigeria.
The plan was to set a date to shoot and then fundraise to add money to the budget, especially for post-production and festival submissions. Over the past year and a half we have continued fundraising even after the shoot in order to rebuild our production fund and support impact screenings and festival circulation.
So the fundraising process has really been ongoing.
Q: What was it about Birdie that pulled you into the project?
Yeti Akinola:
For me it was the story.
The story connected Praise and I because we are both immigrants. I’m Nigerian but I was born in London. Praise was born in Nigeria and is Nigerian-American.
The script explores a period story that hasn’t really been portrayed in this way before. When we first started talking about it, we were able to reference our own families, our parents, our aunties and uncles.
My parents are in their seventies now. They were born in 1950, so they were teenagers during that era. Some of their friends were on the other side of the war or never came back from it. My father was one of the few who left to pursue a PhD abroad.
Working on Birdie allowed me to connect my creative work directly to those histories. Many African children know that our parents sometimes don’t fully understand what we do if we are not doctors or engineers. But this project created a bridge. I could ask my mother about what life was like during that time. What music they listened to, how families coped, how identity was affected.
She even began sharing documentation with me, letters and photographs from that period.
Being able to build the world of the film through those personal archives made the story deeply meaningful. It connected me not just to the project, but to my own heritage in a way that I had not experienced through narrative filmmaking before.
There are documentaries about the Biafran War, but very few narrative works that explore the emotional lives of people connected to that history.
Q: As both producer and costume designer, did overseeing the entire production influence how you approached the costume design?
Yeti Akinola:
On a short film, everything becomes everyone’s responsibility. The budget is never big enough and the time is never enough.
As a producer, my role is to make sure that every department feels supported creatively while also making sure we stay within the limits of the budget. Because I come from a design background, I try to be the kind of producer I wish I had when I am working below the line.
Instead of just handing a department a limited budget and telling them to make it work, I believe in having an honest conversation with the team about what the script requires and how we can realistically achieve it.
For example, we were shooting on 35-millimetre film, which is very expensive. Once we received the cost estimates for film stock and processing, we had to look at the budget and decide where adjustments needed to be made.
In the story, the family exists over what might technically be ten or fifteen days, which could mean ten or fifteen costume changes. That would increase the costume budget significantly.
So we had to think creatively about how to tell the story without losing its integrity. We realised that this refugee family would not have arrived in Virginia with a large wardrobe. They would likely have a few garments, perhaps donations from the local church or nuns, and some pieces they carried with them.
That idea also supported the tone of the story. The repetition of clothing helped reinforce the cyclical feeling of time within the film.
So instead of completely new outfits every day, we created a wardrobe that reflected their limited circumstances while still conveying the emotional and historical reality of their situation.
Q: Did your roles as producer and costume designer ever conflict?
Yeti Akinola:
Ultimately no department is bigger than the film itself.
Of course there were moments where the producer side of me had to step in and prioritise the overall production. But rather than thinking of it as conflict, I see it as collaborative problem solving.
If we had to reduce costume changes, for example, that would lead to conversations with the director and cinematographer about how we might show the passage of time in other ways.
The goal was always to protect the integrity of the story while working within the resources we had.
Q: The costumes in Birdie feel closely tied to the characters’ psychology. How did you begin building the wardrobe language for the film?
Yeti Akinola:
Research was central to the process.
I looked at historical archives, documentary footage, and personal family materials to understand how people dressed during that time. But the most important part of the research was understanding the emotional lives of the characters.
The story focuses heavily on the women in the family and on how war affects people who are not directly fighting but are still living with its consequences.
Costume design and production design are often what first draws an audience into a film’s world. Clothing can immediately signal the period, the social circumstances of the characters and the emotional tone of the story.
So we spent a lot of time discussing the backstory of each character. How they arrived in Virginia. What they might have carried with them. What parts of their identity they might still hold on to.
There is also a soldier who appears in the story, and his wardrobe reflects a different psychological reality. As someone shaped by war, his clothing reflects discipline and routine. Even after the war ends, that structure remains part of him.
Understanding those internal stories helped shape how each character appeared on screen.
Q: Was this your first time at Sundance?
Yeti Akinola:
No, it was my second.
I previously designed the Ugandan-American short film Rest Stop, which premiered at TIFF and later screened at Sundance in 2023. That film won the Short Jury Prize.
With Birdie, however, it was my first time attending Sundance as both producer and costume designer.
Q: Did that change your experience of the festival?
Yeti Akinola:
Very much so.
When you are a costume designer, your work is largely finished once production ends. But as a producer, the film continues with you every day. There are emails to answer, meetings to attend, distribution discussions and festival logistics to manage.
Attending Sundance itself becomes part of the production process. We had meetings with agents, potential distributors, programmers and other filmmakers. We were also building community.
We hosted a panel at the festival and invited other African women filmmakers to participate. That included directors whose films were also screening at Sundance.
Creating that space was important to me. During my first Sundance experience I didn’t necessarily have the opportunity to build that kind of community. This time, being able to bring those voices together felt incredibly meaningful.
Q: Do you feel Birdie is arriving at a particularly timely moment socially or politically?
Yeti Akinola:
Yes, I do.
The film explores themes of displacement, migration and identity, and those issues are extremely relevant right now across the world.
Our team itself represents different parts of the diaspora. I am based in London, Praise is in New York, and other members of the cast and crew are in Nigeria and across the United States.
Around the time we received news that the film would premiere at Sundance, there were discussions about travel restrictions affecting Nigerians. Some filmmakers were unable to attend festivals because of those policies.
At the same time, immigration debates are happening globally, whether in the United States, the United Kingdom or elsewhere. People move to new countries in search of opportunity, yet they are often told they do not belong.
Birdie raises questions about what home really means. When people are displaced or forced to rebuild their lives elsewhere, what remains of home? And what happens when those identities are fractured across borders?
Q: What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
Yeti Akinola:
I hope audiences feel a sense of relief, almost like an exhale.
For many people, seeing stories like this on screen can feel validating. It can feel like recognition that these histories and experiences matter.
I hope audiences who have their own migration stories can connect with the film in personal ways. But I also hope it opens conversations about identity, displacement and the emotional consequences of war.
For me, Birdie is not only about creating a beautiful film. It is about asking questions and creating space for conversations that have often been overlooked.
Conclusion
Through these conversations, Birdie emerges as a product of deeply personal histories, creative risk, and collaboration across continents. From its restrained visual language to its careful reconstruction of a displaced family’s world, Birdie reflects a commitment to telling a story rooted in migration, identity and historical memory.
As the film continues its journey through festivals and audiences, the filmmakers hope it will encourage reflection on the emotional lives behind migration stories and open conversations about belonging, resilience and what it means to carry home across borders.
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