LGM Film Club, Part 561: Trouble Sleep

Trouble Sleep is a 2020 film directed by Alain Kassanda. It is a study of life in the taxis of Abidan, the third largest city in Nigeria. It follows two men–one is a civil engineer who is now having to support himself as a cab driver. The other is a street guy who stops cars, charging tolls for their “union.” So an obvious text here, even though outside of an early conversation at a bar between the two men, it’s not really an overtly political film, is that education in a nation like Nigeria is completely worthless, not with all the corruption and lack of jobs for anyone with a brain. It’s a sort of tribute to life and survival in the city, with some poetry voiceover at one point, lots of shots of people just living their lives there. There’s no great message here, nothing for you to come away except for people and their dignity, doing the best they can. That’s good enough. Great music too–the title comes from a Fela Kuti song, which is also in the film, as is a lot of other good music.