Coconut Head Generation

Every Thursday, a group of students from the University of Ibadan, the oldest in Nigeria, organise a film club that transforms a small lecture hall into a political arena where the students develop a critical voice.

The ‘coconut head generation’, a disparaging term for a stubborn and brainless youth, takes on a whole new meaning as the students turn this stigma around and demand their freedom of thought.

Alain Kassanda left the Democratic Republic of Congo at the age of 11 and went to France. After studying communication, he staged cycles of film screenings in various theatres in Paris. He then spent five years as programme manager of an arthouse cinema in a suburb of Paris before moving to Ibadan in south-west Nigeria from 2015 to 2019. There he made Trouble Sleep, a medium-length film that focuses on the street, portrayed from the perspective of a taxi driver and a tax collector. The film was awarded the Golden Dove for Best Film at the Dok Leipzig Festival 2019. This was followed by ‘Colette and Justin’, a feature film that links his family story with the history of the decolonisation of the Congo. The film was part of the international competition at Idfa 2022. Coconut Head Generation is his third film.