Private Project

Mo

When he mistakenly kills a bully, a zealous fresh medical graduate flees to a rural community only to confront his past and encounter destiny.

Set in a fictitious southern Nigerian community, this reimagined story from a biblical text contextualized in an African setting tells a story of passion, love and destiny.

  • OtoObong Ekpenyong
    Director
  • Ukeme Equere
    Writer
  • OtoObong Ekpenyong
    Producer
  • Charlz 'Bonja' Archibong
    Director of Photography
  • Tony Aleogena-Raphael
    Executive Producer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama
  • Runtime:
    40 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    July 20, 2018
  • Country of Origin:
    Nigeria
  • Country of Filming:
    Nigeria
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    R3D Raw
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Inshort Film Festival
    Victoria Island, Lagos
    Nigeria
    December 29, 2018
    Best Use of Visual Effects
Director Biography - OtoObong Ekpenyong

OtoObong Ekpenyong holds a Bachelor of Art in Christian Education and has produced digital content in faith-based organizations for over a decade. In the 2013 and 2014 Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) training sessions, he emerged one of the best in Sound for Film and Cinematography respectively and won the festival’s talent development scholarship in 2014.
In 2015, he was one of 18 African filmmakers trained at Montana State University (MSU)’s Social Justice Documentary Filmmaking Workshop in Bozeman with funding by Ford Foundation. In 2016, while chaperoning 13 other Africans to the same workshop - which he also served as teaching assistant, he directed his first short - a documentary themed around the essence of the workshop; 'By Africans About Africa’ - which has screened at iRepresent International Documentary Film Festival, Lagos Island, Lagos.
In 2017 he embarked on his debut short - ‘If Only’, produced courtesy of a seed grant by Ford Foundation, underwritten by Africa International Film Festival’s talent development initiative which has been screened at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival (SVAFF) in San Jose, California, at the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in Victoria Island, Lagos and is scheduled to screen at the Lake International Pan African Film Festival in Nakuru, Kenya.
In 2018 he embarked on his sophomore short - ‘Eno’s Demons’, a hybrid documentary project produced for mental illness awareness which has been screened at Screen It Film Festival (SIFF) in Gold Coast, Australia and Amazing Shorts in Madrid, Spain - where it won Best African Short Film. In the same year, he also produced ‘MO’ as the special showcase for a faith-based film festival - '5 Movies and the Word’. It won the Special Jury Award in recognition of the film that best advanced the biblical worldview for that festival edition.

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Director Statement

One of the most impressionable times of my life is the year before University that I spent in my village. Those rural sites and sounds have been ingrained in my mind since and this work offered me the opportunity to share some of those kind of ‘beauties’ with the world.
Set in a fictitious southern Nigerian village called Amana, ‘Mo’ tells the story of a fresh medical graduate who, after accidentally killing a bully, flees to a rural community only to confront his past and encounter destiny.
Originally produced as the special showcase for a faith-based film festival, this reimagined story from a biblical text contextualized in an African setting takes you on a journey in my bid to show the power of visual storytelling in bringing home the universality of the broad themes of life.
My goal with this was to tell this story in hope that it will take us back to the exciting stories in this ancient text and to see how relevant they are to our present day situations and circumstances.