His mother is a character right out of Portlandia: a credulous white woman from Kansas who fell for a charismatic Nigerian classmate in college. She insists on keeping an array of weird pets she’s rescued and always maintains that her estranged husband still loves the family despite having abandoned them. He has described his mother as “the most comically optimistic person on earth.”
When their father calls, their already turbulent lives are sent into new spirals as they are forced to face the past. Ahamefule had created a pseudo-Nigerian identity for himself based on what little he knew of his father and the village he came from, an identity that is stripped from him in an instant when he speaks to the man. He also learns he’s misinterpreted the meaning of his own name all his life. He must grapple with the search for a new identity, as well as newly understood, radical, cultural differences in expectations of fathers and sons. He’s shocked to learn that even how a man regards his family is different in Nigeria. During all this madness, or perhaps because of it, Ahamefule begins to suffer from a strange auto-immune illness that becomes a metaphor for his search for self.
“…semi-autobiographical dramatic feature starring the people it’s about…”
Ahamefule is as good an actor as he is a musician, and his sister is brilliant as well. They tell their story unflinchingly with passion and humor, and then he plays jazz, and you realize you didn’t need to know the details in words because it’s all there in the music. The film draws you in with the quiet, dark humor he maintains despite desperate circumstances and an existential identity crisis. The vibe owes something to Spike Lee’s incredible Mo Better Blues. Thin Skin is a film any director would be proud to claim. It’s a solid, steady movie that soars beyond the limitations of its Indie budget.
Listen to the Wedding Crasher segment on This American Life and then go on the Thin Skin journey of self-discovery with the Oluo’s. What you get from them may open your mind to new insights about your own experience.
"…you didn’t need to know the details from the film, because it’s all there in the music..."
