Does Nollywood know when to be quiet? Does it know when to let scenes breathe? Is silence a foreign unused language in Nollywood? Or, Nollywood is simply a reflection of its society.
The Noise We’re Known For
Nigeria moves to the rhythm of noise. It fills our streets, our markets, our buses, our gatherings.
We talk over one another, we shout from across rooms, we argue even when we agree. Noise is our punctuation, the way we announce life.
It is not disorder; it is our texture, our identity. So when Nollywood speaks in the same tone, it feels natural. Every scene is alive with movement, sound, laughter, quarrels, or tears. Even silence is rarely silent.
But somewhere within that familiarity, something gets lost. The talk, the drama, the constant need to fill space with sound, leaves little room for breath. It is as if Nollywood has inherited our cultural volume but misplaced its cinematic voice.
If cinema is partly the art of restraint, of what is not said, of how emotion lingers in the pause, then has our industry mistaken noise for presence? Or are we simply watching ourselves as we truly are, a people who find comfort in commotion?
The Habit of Noise
Somewhere along the way, Nollywood decided that silence was a sign of emptiness. Scenes are packed tight with dialogue, as if a quiet moment might break the spell of entertainment. We have built an industry that fears stillness. The result is films that rarely breathe, where words chase meaning until both collapse from exhaustion. Even when stories promise action, conversation swallows the tension before it can rise.
Take Raji and The Beast, a film that should pulse with raw energy. Instead, every chase is slowed by talk, every emotional beat diluted by commentary. The script does not trust its own rhythm; it keeps explaining what we can already see. And this is not an isolated habit. From thrillers to romance to melodrama, Nollywood often feels like a conversation that never ends. Characters do not speak to reveal truth, they speak because silence feels wrong.
Comedy has taken this to its extreme. Since The Wedding Party, our screens have become crowded with the same noisy template: extravagant scenes, celebrity cameos, overlapping chatter, and the ritual of chaos that passes for humour. It is cultural theatre, the same kind of commotion that marks Nigerian celebrations in real life. There is a beauty to it, yes, but also fatigue. When every film is a festival of volume, laughter loses its sharpness, and chaos becomes predictable. Let’s not even talk of Everybody Loves Jenifa.
In this habit of noise, Nollywood mirrors the Nigerian instinct for liveliness: our need to fill every gap with sound, with action, with strong activity. Yet what makes us so full of life may also be what keeps our cinema from discovering its quieter power.
When Silence Becomes Cinema
Silence in film is not emptiness; it is attention. The quiet allows emotion to echo. It lets an actor’s face speak, lets the city hum in the background, lets the viewer feel the weight of what is unsaid. Few Nigerian films understand this language, but the ones that do linger long after the credits roll.
In Eyimofe (This is My Desire), Lagos, the setting, is noisy. Yet the film itself is calm. It watches life unfold without forcing it. The camera follows its characters through the city’s frenzy, but never tries to match it. Amidst the chaos, people live quietly — thinking, hoping, waiting. It is a rare Lagos film that trusts the stillness of ordinary life.
The Milkmaid does the same with pain. Its silence is not peaceful but heavy, filled with what cannot be voiced. The pauses between scenes stretch like breath held too long. In My Father’s Shadow, silence becomes memory, a bridge between the living and the dead. With Difficulty Comes Ease uses quiet to mirror restraint and pain, showing how silence can shape identity and pride in a society that rewards loudness.
Then there is Over the Bridge, where silence surrounds guilt, and Mami Wata, where it becomes ritual. These films speak in whispers, but they are more articulate than many shouting ones. They remind us that cinema, at its best, is visual thought.
Their directors trust the viewer enough to listen; not to dialogue, but to the world itself.
A Country That Fears Quiet?
Silence unsettles us. It feels unnatural, almost suspicious. In most cultures in Nigeria, silence is often mistaken for weakness or boredom. We fill every space with noise: music, laughter, sermons, traffic, arguments, joy. Even our mourning is loud. It is how we prove we are alive, how we show presence. So when our films talk too much, perhaps they are only doing what we all do.
Nollywood inherited this rhythm from the streets it films. The energy, the chatter, the improvisation. They all come from real life. Yet cinema is not real life; it is reflection. What works on the street can drain a story on screen. When every film screams to be heard, none of them truly listen. The culture of noise has become an aesthetic, and the camera rarely dares to hold still long enough for silence to mean something.
Still, it is difficult to blame the industry alone. Our audiences, too, resist quiet. A long pause in dialogue can feel like a mistake. A slow scene feels like delay. We demand that the screen move as fast as our cities, that our stories never stop talking. And so, even in fiction, we perform our restlessness.
But what if silence is not absence? What if it is our most honest sound? The space where we actually confront ourselves?
The Silence We Avoid
Perhaps silence frightens us because it reveals too much. Dialogue can hide confusion; chaos can mask emptiness. But silence leaves a film bare. It forces truth to the surface. The truth of a performance, of a moment, of a country still learning to sit with itself.
Nollywood does not have to abandon its noise. Noise is part of our essence. But cinema can choose when to breathe, when to let a pause hold the room, when to let the hum Lagos, or the sound of the wind in Kaduna speak more than any monologue ever could.
The power of stillness is not foreign to us. It lives in the eyes of actors like Temi Ami-Williams in Eyimofe, in the heavy pauses between scenes in With Difficulty Comes Ease, in the lingering frames of Mami Wata. These are not empty moments. They are moments of listening to silence, to space, to meaning.
If silence is cinematic truth, then maybe our noise says something too. Maybe it says we fear what stillness might reveal.
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