Nneoma

Nneoma opens with a dedication to children forced into adulthood too soon. The nine-year-old girl stirs a pot over an outdoor fire while her younger siblings wait. Her mother's friends burst into the compound in panic and the tray crashes to the ground. The children call her Auntie and ask when their mother will return as the youngest complains of hunger. Three months later the girl wears a pink head wrap and takes over every household ritual that once belonged to her mother. She dresses her siblings for school and combs their hair and manages the chores in a house that has fallen silent without her mother's footsteps or singing. The neighbors begin calling her the good mother yet she feels only like a little girl trying to keep two smaller hearts from breaking. When school ends she hawks roasted corn under a hot sun to feed them while other children play. Thirteen years later an older woman walks the same red dirt road with a heavy tray balanced on her head. She reflects that the rules and the path have not changed even though the faces and footsteps have. In a direct address to the camera she defines a mother as anyone who chooses love and accepts responsibility when life offers every reason not to. The tray grows heavier and life grows heavier yet she keeps selling hope. Then she looks straight into the lens and accepts that her name has become her destiny as the good mother. She knows she was not born a mother but that love asked the little girl to become one and she answered. The screen fades to black with a final message that premature responsibility kills the life of every young child and the credits roll.