Babátúndé Lawal & Oluwayinka Akintunde's 'Honeycomb' Is An Unsettling Meditation On Power

The first thing Honeycomb makes clear is that this is a film built on control.

Not just in what it says, but in what it withholds. Directed by Babátúndé Lawal and photographed with unsettling restraint by cinematographer Oluwayinka Akintunde, the short film imagines Nigeria in 2036 as a place where survival has replaced morality, and where power no longer announces itself loudly. It simply watches.

Premiering at the Afropolis Festival, Honeycomb is a co-production between Arte House Studios and Meroestream, written by Lawal and Tobi Marho.

The film has since gone on to win Best Screenplay at the 2024 Film Joint Awards, a prestigious recognition within the short film space, while nominated for 3 other categories, including Best African Film, Outstanding Film by the Jury, and Best Indigenous Film.

It has screened across festivals in Nigeria, the UK, India, and other territories. That reach feels earned. This is a work that understands how local anxieties translate globally when they are rendered with precision.

The story follows two disgraced politicians fleeing an anti-government militia known as the Anti-Government Coalition. Once powerful, now exposed, they stumble into the home of a man called The Doctor, played with disarming calm by Chukwu Martin.

From the moment they enter his space, the film contracts. Rooms feel smaller. Silences feel longer. The tension is not driven by action, but by proximity.

Much of that unease is authored visually. Akintunde’s cinematography, working alongside Damilola Abiodun Olabiyi, favours tight framing and deliberate stillness.

The camera does not chase the characters. It waits for them. Interiors are composed to feel enclosing, almost observational, as though the audience has become complicit in the act of watching. Outside, the world opens into emptiness rather than freedom, reinforcing the idea that escape is an illusion.

Lawal and Marho’s script uses irony as its sharpest tool. The politicians, men who once governed without consequence, are now reduced to bargaining for safety. The dinner scene distils the film’s moral thesis.

When the Doctor’s wife, played by Isoken Aruede, dismisses the idea of payment with the line, “money has no value here anymore,” the film lands its most brutal truth. In this future, currency has been replaced by utility.

Performances are finely tuned to the film’s restraint. Martin’s Doctor shifts effortlessly between warmth and menace, grounding the film’s ambiguity. Aruede brings a quiet severity to her role, her hospitality edged with something harder.

Molayo Ogidan’s performance as the Doctor’s daughter is particularly disquieting. Her innocence feels rehearsed, and when she casually addresses Emeka by name without introduction, the moment lands as a quiet rupture that signals how much control this family truly holds.

The visual language never overstates itself. Akintunde’s compositions rely on balance and denial, allowing dread to accumulate naturally. Faces linger just long enough to become unreadable. Spaces feel charged even when nothing is happening.

It is a cinematographic approach that understands horror as psychological rather than spectacular, and it significantly elevates the material.

There are moments where the film lingers too long on atmosphere, particularly in its opening passages, where shots of desolation slightly slow the pace.

Similarly, the Doctor’s family, compelling as they are, could benefit from deeper contextual grounding. Their philosophy is suggested more than explored. Still, these are minor limitations in a film that otherwise demonstrates remarkable discipline.

What ultimately makes Honeycomb resonate is its cohesion. Direction, writing, and cinematography are aligned in purpose. Lawal’s vision is not simply visualised by the camera. It is shaped by it. Akintunde’s work does not decorate the narrative. It interrogates it.

The movie is not just a dystopian short film. It is a controlled, unsettling meditation on power, consequence, and the futures we quietly author. In its silence and restraint, it offers a vision of Nigeria that feels disturbingly plausible and difficult to shake.

Honeycomb premiered at the 2024 Afropolis Festival of Arts and is not currentlyavailable on streaming platforms.