Omotola’s New Movie Is Set to Challenge the Way Nigerian Films Portray Motherhood

Nollywood veteran actress Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde is making her directorial debut with a different and sharper focus. Speaking recently on Yanga FM, the screen icon highlighted a glaring void in the industry’s catalogue, which is the authentic reality of mother-daughter relationships.

“We don’t have too many films that explore or showcase the relationship between mothers and daughters,” Omotola said during the interview, describing the subject as something deeply personal to her. 

Speaking honestly about raising her first daughter, she admitted she had only one mode at the time, which was discipline. “I didn’t do a good job,” she said plainly, explaining that she understood motherhood strictly through control, not softness or emotional openness.

At the centre of Mother’s Love is Adebisi, a sheltered young woman from a wealthy home whose life is shaped by her father’s rigid control. Her first taste of freedom comes through NYSC, where distance from home allows her to begin discovering who she is outside her family’s expectations. She forms a friendship with a young man from a more modest background, and through him, starts to see the world and herself differently.

But the emotional core of the film isn’t Adebisi’s rebellion. It’s her mother. Long after being presented as quiet and compliant, she slowly reveals a resolve when her daughter’s safety and future are threatened. As secrets surface and buried grief comes into view, Mother’s Love becomes less about youthful independence and more about maternal sacrifice, unspoken trauma, and the emotional costs of survival inside a patriarchal home.

The film doesn’t shy away from weighty themes by including PTSD, unresolved grief, and social inequality at the centre of the story. It is far removed from the soft-focus sentimentality that often defines Mother’s Day-style narratives.

 It also marks Omotola’s directorial debut, a significant moment considering how long she has shaped Nollywood from the front of the camera. She stars in the film alongside a mix of familiar faces and newer talent, including Ifeanyi Kalu, Olumide Oworu, and Noray Nehita.

Beyond the film itself, Omotola’s Yanga FM interview touched on a tension that has been simmering in Nollywood for a while now: how movies are marketed in the age of TikTok. Addressing the growing expectation for actors and filmmakers to create viral dance content to promote their work, she didn’t mince words. The pressure, she said, is exhausting and unnatural.

For her, the industry wasn’t meant to function this way. Still, she was careful not to judge anyone else’s approach. Everyone invests differently, carries different risks, and should be allowed to promote their films however they see fit.

“Do whatever you can do. It’s exhausting, it’s not natural. For me, the film industry is not supposed to be like that. We are encouraging nonsense if we are doing that. It doesn’t mean that whoever is doing it is wrong."

Her comments arrive not long after the public back-and-forth between Kunle Afolayan and Funke Akindele over marketing styles, a debate that quickly turned into a proxy war between prestige storytelling and viral strategy. Omotola’s stance sits somewhere calmer. She understands the shift social media has brought, but she’s also clear about her own boundaries. 

Omotola’s critique about the lack of mother-daughter stories isn’t unfounded. In Nollywood, mothers often exist as symbols rather than people. They’re either saintly figures who pray endlessly for their children or villains whose cruelty drives the plot forward. What’s missing is intimacy, the negotiations, and the regrets. The love that exists alongside resentment and misunderstanding.

Films rarely sit with the emotional complexity of women raising daughters in systems that also failed them. There’s little room for mothers who made mistakes but are still trying, or daughters who love their mothers while questioning the damage they inherited. Mother’s Love attempts to occupy that space, offering a more grounded portrayal that reflects lived experience rather than archetypes.

That’s where the film’s potential impact lies, in the decision to centre a relationship that Nollywood has largely flattened. If it works, it could open the door for more stories that treat motherhood as a lived, evolving reality rather than a fixed moral position.

Mother’s Love, directed by and starring Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, had its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2025. The film is set for a nationwide cinema release in Nigeria on March 6, 2026.

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