Maitama (film)
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| Maitama | |
|---|---|
 Montecara Film Festival poster for Maitama | |
| Directed by | Tuni Tangaza |
| Written by | Tuni Tangaza Tomás Mijinyawa |
| Based on | L'euphorie by Tomás Mijinyawa |
| Produced by | Sule Gwani |
| Starring | Atiku Mangou Haruna Lamine Amina Zaria |
| Cinematography | Danladi Choge |
| Edited by | Sammako Dauda |
| Music by | Sahura Garba |
Release dates |
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Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country |  Kitaubani |
| Languages | Hausa X |
Maitama is a 2023 Kitauban biographical drama film about the life of purported faith healer/con artist Nuruddeen Maitama. Directed by female director Tuni Tangaza, it features longtime actor Atiku Mangou as Maitama, and follows the latter's rise and fall in a series of vignettes. The film was largely produced through funds procured by Tangaza's own production company and through her personal influence in the world of cinema. As a biography, Maitama portrays the controversial figure's life visually rather than literally, in order to explore the subject's impact on Kitauban society.
The film borrowed heavily from Paretian-born Kitauban journalist Tomás Mijinyawa's 1994 exposé L'euphorie. This book was widely credited with bringing accusations of Maitama's fraud to worldwide attention, eventually leading to his arrest; as a result, Mijinyawa served as both a consultant and a writer during production. As Mijinyawa was at one time a personal confidant of Maitama, the film intimately explores the psyche of Maitama, and frames the discussion around his mission as a question of motivation; that is, whether Maitama was a fraud or merely deluded. As a result, the film explores themes of mental illness and its stigmas in Kitauban society, deception, faith, sectarianism, abuse of fame, and the wider socio-political context of Kitaubani in the 1990s, during the time when Maitama came to prominence. The film mixes realistic and surrealistic visuals in order to either make the thought processes of Maitama more relatable to viewers or portray some of his claims as so absurd as to be fabricated for the sole purpose of deception. The film has been noted to resemble the conventions of a music biopic, as it portrays similarities between Maitama's fame and the popularity cycle of celebrity musicians.
Plot
The film opens in 1996, on Maitama (Atiku Mangou) being incarcerated at Gashi's notorious Department XII Prison following his murder conviction. The prison bus is slow to enter the prison grounds; throngs of people choke the street in front. The crowd is divided: on one side stand the remaining faithful, a smaller crowd than Maitama's detractors but nonetheless equally vigorous and loud in their protestations. At times, the bus is even rocked by protestors and counterprotestors alike. Inside the bus, the guards flanking Maitama are sat unusually far from him; it is unclear to the audience whether it is out of disgust or reverence. Maitama maintains an aloof, vacant smile with slightly upturned eyes throughout, even while being booked in the prison and tossed unceremoniously into an empty cell. After surveying the cell, Maitama discovers a set of glyphic marks on the stone brick wall. Tracing his fingers over each glyph, Maitama briefly relives moments from his tumultuous childhood in the rural Sule Department. Visions of hardship and joy overlap, steadily becoming more and more visible on the screen until they appear as if they were projected onto the wall in front of Maitama.
Eventually, Maitama finds the implement with which the glyphs were made, and decides to carve his own. As he begins, the first of the film's many breaks with reality happens as the implement breaks through the wall (previously implied to be several inches thick) to reveal a scene from Maitama's life: the younger Maitama struggling to escape a brush fire. The current Maitama watches his younger self struggle to find shelter from the flames. Eventually, the older Maitama rushes forth to help the younger escape; from the latter's perspective, the former resembles his deceased father, and assumes that his ancestral spirit had come to guide him to safety. (In reality, this event was cited by Maitama as the inciting incident for his ministry.) Following the rescue, Maitama finds himself returned to his cell, with no signs of the previous calamity aside from stray ash on the floor. The story follows him to the exercise yard, which is beyond maximum capacity. As Maitama stares at the sky, a cry greets him. Upon turning around, he sees his first wife, Meriga (Amina Zaria) on the floor of the yard, unresponsive. Maitama looks around in vain for anyone to help him assist her, but nobody seems to notice; he prays for her to awaken.
The film continues through a day at the prison, following Maitama as various vignettes interrupt his routine. These visions grow darker in subject matter, depicting non-literally pain caused by the alleged abuse that occurred in his ministerial practice. In line with these visions escalating in severity and depravity, Maitama grows increasingly estranged and set apart from his prison mates. Originally given little attention by fellow prisoners, Maitama's outbursts accompanying the visions recounting his disturbing acts increasingly invoke reactions of confusion and even disgust. It is unclear whether the prisoners can also see Maitama's visions or if they are merely reacting to Maitama's actions. In a dramatic flourish, some prisoners ambush Maitama while he prepares to go to the mess hall; he is beaten senseless while he has a vision of an acolyte undergoing abuse, mirroring his experience. In many ways, the visions of Maitama's cult-like treatment of his ministry staff grows to resemble the violent, filthy Department XII Prison, illustrating the amount of abusive violence wrought upon Maitama's disciples and patients.
The final scene of the movie features the morning after Maitama awakes from this dream. Though the course of the "prison section" of the film is implied to have only taken place over less than 24 hours, Maitama appears to have visibly aged since the scene of his incarceration. As he lies awake in his bed, trembling from leftover fear, a hole appears in his cell wall as a neighboring prisoner tunnels into his cell. Through the peephole, the prisoner can see Maitama, and begins asking him to join his escape attempt. From Maitama's perspective, however, all he sees is a glimpse of his younger self escaping the fire. Rather than helping his younger self to safety, as he had done before, Maitama watches as the fire catches up and consumes him. The neighor's confused queries into Maitama's expression come across to Maitama as desperate, final pleas for help from his younger self; the final shot zooms in on Maitama's eye through the peephole, as the screams crescendo until they abruptly end, implying that he let his younger self be consumed by the flames.
Context
The real Nuruddeen Maitama was born in the rural environs of Sule Department, on the northern edge of the island of Kitaubani, on October 5th, 1962. Raised on an impoverished farm and orphaned at a young age, he was forced to live on the charity of his extended family and older siblings until, according to Maitama, a brush fire destroyed the village. No records exist for such a destructive blaze at the time he recounts, but he nonetheless claims that a visit from the ancestral spirit of his father saved his life and inspired him to spread good faith through spiritual healing. In the late 1980s, Maitama opened a "spiritual healing practice" in the city of Sule, where he quickly gained a reputation as a faith healer. His beliefs were likely influenced by the Aladura faith of his home region, which combined a belief in the power of ancestral spirits and filial piety with Solarian Catholic teachings surrounding the Blessed Virgin and the intercession of saints. To this end, Maitama would claim that he merely needed to pray and perform "psychic surgery" in order to heal most, if not all, ailments.