October 12, (THEWILL) – Media entrepreneur, Chude Jideonwo, is now a movie producer. The lawyer cum Journalist has released his first movie ‘Awaiting Trial.’
According to him, the movie was inspired after he was invited by Toyin Oyemade, wife of Poju Oyemade, founder of Covenant Life Church to outreach in Kirikiri Prison, Lagos Nigeria.
He was assigned to help an inmate who told his story of how he was arrested more than a decade ago and has been awaiting trial since then.
He had the prompting to make a film out of his experience during the visitation.
“About 12 years ago, Toyin Oyemade invited me and some others to outreach at Kirikiri Prison in Lagos, Nigeria.
“At the prison, I heard the most heart-rending story from the inmate I was assigned to help.
“He had been in prison for more than a decade. He was arrested before phones came to Nigeria and had been awaiting trial ever since.
“His family back in the North not knowing if he is dead or if he is alive.
“I knew somewhere in my heart that if I ever followed the calling to make films and no one had yet told me this story, this was the first film I was going to make.
“Here we are, in 2022 and I am deeply thankful to my partners, team and courageous cast for the privilege of making that dream a reality.
“After two years of heart-felt work, we present ‘Awaiting Trial’- the first film from our studio Chude Jideonwo Presents.
“Over the next 24 months, you will be seeing a slate of factual and unscripted contents from our studio – docuseries, docudrama, biopics, reality soaps, stand-up, true crimes- that tells the stories of our common humanity in a way that connects deeply with audiences in and from Africa.
“There are so many unexplored stories, every day in the news headlines, that tell us something meaningful about who we are and how we got here. But, as we struggle to survive, we don’t go beyond the headlines, and we don’t find deeper truths.
“We tell those stories, like this one- about Chijioke and Okuchukwu, and Jimoh, about Yellow and the depraved criminal justice system that has left them either disappeared or dead”, he wrote.
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