Nigeria, U.K. | 2026 | Fiction | 106 min | English
In this reimagining of Mrs. Dalloway, filmmakers Arie and Chuko Esiri transport Virginia Woolf’s 1925 modernist classic from London to Lagos, Nigeria, and from the World War I era to the present. Here the affluent Clarissa (Sophie Okonedo), a society wife, is preparing her luxurious home for a party.
She falls into a melancholy reverie about her past that reopens unresolved emotional histories. In flashbacks to her younger self (India Amarteifio), we realize that by choosing this life, she has forfeited other lives. Okenodo's Clarissa knows how to navigate wealth, marriage, motherhood, and social expectation with immaculate composure, but the woman she once was would likely be horrified by the her present life. Decisions we make casually in our youth have momentous consequences for later life.
By the time the party brings her older crowd together, we know Clarissa's past well enough hat we understand the history underlying the partygoers' interactions. A glance across a crowded room expresses a relationship. Someone casually mentioning a name reignites dormant passions.
This mesmerizing film retains Woolf’s themes—memory and regret, modernity and progress, class and privilege, possibility and closure—in a different cultural context. The intricate, overlapping narratives of these and other characters are beautifully crafted. A captivating film.
