ONE of Nigeria’s filmmaker and photographer, Tony Sebastian Ukpo shone like a bright star in France when he pitched his new project to a standing-room-only international audience of broadcasters, video-on-demand platforms, and potential producers at the Series Mania Forum, a film industry market aimed specifically at TV series, in Lille, France
Ukpo, was at the market alongside Angela Wamai from Kenya, Chantel Clark from South Africa, and Jessica Hagan from Ghana, after a rigorous six months mentorship, coaching, and support by the AuthenticA Series Lab initiative.
Ukpo pitched his horror genre series, Masquerade at the film market. His story is about 13-year-old Nigerian-American teenager, Aduni, who after losing her father, finds herself feeling trapped in the harsh, remote boarding school in Nigeria, a country still struggling to escape the shadow of its colonial history, where spurned local spiritual practice and folklore remain strong and very real. Her grief manifests in the form of a malevolent spirit, and she realises that not facing her grief can have monstrous consequences.