Kannywood, the conservative cinema of northern Nigeria

Audio 19:30

“Kannywood” films are very popular in northern Nigeria.

AMINU ABUBAKAR / AFP

By: Liza Fabbian

21 mins

In the 90s, a powerful film industry was born in Nigeria: it is Nollywood, a market which soon overtook that of Hollywood.

If this story is famous, many do not know that another film industry was also developing, at the same time, in the north of the most populous country in Africa.

And more particularly in the large Muslim city of Kano.

It was she who gave its name to Kannywood, the Hausa-language cinema - whose production is imbued with a religious conservatism at odds with the excesses permitted in southern Nigeria. 

  • Nigeria

  • Cinema

  • Culture

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