In addition to being an award-winning producer, director, and screenwriter, Kaelo Iyizoba is a self-proclaimed hater of love. Ironically, he has a remarkably nuanced understanding of love and relationships.
This informs his role as director of Before We Fall Asleep. The film follows Tola, a young father who loses his job and struggles to adapt to life as the primary caregiver while his partner becomes the family’s breadwinner. According to Kaelo, ‘This is a story about a couple who have expectations about what society expects their relationship to be’. ’But they are also learning that what society expects won’t always work for them,’ he adds.
How it started
Initially, Kaelo picked up the script because of Blessing Uzzi, the writer of Before We Fall Asleep and showrunner for the Zikoko Life Series productions. ‘I’ve been a fan of Blessing’s work for a while. I love the way she thinks. When I read this script, I knew I had to make it with her,’ he says. But what cemented his interest was the film’s premise. Kaelo describes Before We Fall Asleep as ‘One of those films that would start a conversation. The kind that will split people down the middle’
From his first narrative film, Boy Meets Girl, in which a teenage boy meets a girl on the bus who turns out to be a suicide bomber, to his more recent works. It’s easy to tell that he likes to confront difficult conversations. Before We Fall Asleep is no different. ‘I wanted to make the kind of film where the right choice isn’t clear. Each choice is heavily dependent on a different perspective, and neither choice is wrong per se,’ he says.
This is why he found himself wanting to direct Before We Fall Asleep, even though it appears to be romance at first glance. Interestingly, this is Kaelo’s first time directing a film that he didn’t write. ‘When you write something, you are still attached to it as a writer. So, when it’s time to make some directorial decisions, which may mean taking something out, you’re less likely to do it. One thing creatives will tell you is that you have to kill your darlings. It was easier to kill the darlings here because I was serving as the director. My job was to make this work as a finished product, not as a script.
The Details That Made the Difference
While the media is filled with stories about falling in love and falling out of love, it rarely explores the ordinary domestic moments that make up most of a relationship. Before We Fall Asleep breaks that mold. Instead of cheating husbands and drunken fights, we see baby baths and burnt noodles. Kaelo takes what would ordinarily be considered boring, everyday life and makes these intimate moments worth watching.
To do this, every choice, from the cast to the lighting, was intentional. The film features an unlikely pairing with Tobi Bakare as Tola and Onyinye Odokoro as Nazo. ‘I remember when Blessing first mentioned that she was thinking of casting Tobi, I was like, ‘ah, isn’t that the action star’? But then I met him; we had our first rehearsal, and I was blown away,’ Kaelo says. ‘We’ve seen him jump off bridges a lot, and it was equally amazing to see this side of him. In the last scene, where they have their final fight as a couple, Tobi and Onyinye were doing things that weren’t even scripted. It was like they had entered an almost spiritual mode where they had become these characters,’ he said.
Kaelo wanted Tola and Nazo’s home life to feel like two Nigerians existing in this space where they aren’t together in a conventional way. But they’re with each other in every way that matters.
Kaelo believes the representation of their partnership is important and central to the film. ‘There are different types of relationships, and it’s important to represent that in film. I don’t think I’ve seen any Nigerian film where the couple is partnered, but not exactly married. At the same time, people can relate to Nazo’s mother, who is a traditionalist and expects things to be done a certain way.’
These creative choices also extended to Nazo’s workplace.‘The workplace in the film reflects the reality of most workplaces in Nigeria, where there really is no support,’ Kaelo says. ‘I know a couple of companies now provide support for new mothers. But largely it’s still unheard of that you go to a place, and they have a daycare.’
The hardest challenge in directing a family-centred film came from one of the most essential members of the crew, the five-month-old baby who plays Feyisola. ‘We built all our schedules around the baby. All the plans we make go out the window whenever she has to take a nap. We have to be ready to act when she’s awake. And then we take a pause when she has to shower four times a day,’ he says.
Why This Story Had to Be Told
For some viewers, the answer to the conflict in Before We Fall Asleep seems obvious: hand Tola the broom and let Nazo carry the briefcase. To Kaelo, immediately picking a side defeats the point of the film. ‘When I first read the script, I was on team Nazo. But I had to detach from my personal opinions to understand why Tola made the decisions that he did,’ he says.
That detachment allowed him to direct a much better film because he could modulate Nazo’s character. It helped in making her feel like a real person with emotions. ‘As things got worse, I was careful in guiding her performance. She talks to Tola in a way that it is evident that she’s not blaming him or trying to make him seem like a villain’, he says. To Kaelo, there is no textbook version of a relationship. After watching the film, he hopes that the audience understands that compromise is all that matters. In his words, ‘If Tola still had a job, then their collective salaries would have been enough to allow them to afford a nanny. Then there would have been no issues. An ideal relationship is whatever your relationship needs to be, and that decision is between you and your partner’.
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