This article is part of Nollywire’s FRAME at NIFS coverage, spotlighting conversations about women’s realities in Nollywood’s stories and behind-the-scenes spaces.
During the FRAME conversation at the Nigeria International Film Summit in Lagos, Lagos Fringe co-founder Brenda Fashugba raised a different kind of challenge. While much of Nollywood’s progress is visible on screen, she argued that too many women’s realities remain absent from the stories being told and from the spaces where those stories get made.
One silence she highlighted is around women’s health. “We don’t talk about menopause or pre-menopause,” she said, pointing out how film and television rarely address the physical and emotional experiences that define whole stages of women’s lives. The result is a gap in representation and a missed opportunity to spark understanding and conversation across audiences.
Fashugba also drew attention to the structural barriers that make it harder for women to work in technical fields like editing and cinematography. Nollywood still leans on informal apprenticeship systems, she explained, which often leave women excluded. Concerns about safety and mobility compound the challenge, keeping many women from accessing behind-the-scenes careers.
Yet she was quick to stress the qualities women already bring to filmmaking. Multitasking, collaboration, and persistence are strengths she sees repeatedly; traits she believes the industry undervalues even as it benefits from them.
For Fashugba, the way forward requires more than lip service to inclusion. It means building intentional pipelines into technical roles, supporting stories that address the breadth of women’s lives, and recognising the specific strengths women contribute to production.
“We are not just consumers of stories,” she said. “We are makers. And we want to see every part of our realities on screen.”
Her words underscored a central theme of FRAME: that the fight for better representation in Nollywood is as much about the structures behind the camera as the images in front of it.
This article is part of Nollywire’s coverage of FRAME at NIFS Lagos.
