Shot in dense, high-contrast black and white, writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s “Mami Wata,” unspools like a mysterious dream. It’s both inscrutable and hypnotic, delivering indelible images while remaining narratively opaque.

| Dec 25, 2023

There’s a middle ground worth exploring, which is what the film and the filmmaker try to underscore.

| Nov 17, 2023

This visually beautiful and charismatically acted film is a fierce expressionist reverie or parable of power, shot in a lustrous, high-contrast black-and-white by cinematographer Lílis Soares.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 15, 2023

Respecting the conjuring power of movies is all the devotion that’s required to fall under the spell cast by Obasi’s stark, roiling tale of spirit-world mysteries and all-too-human machinations, filmed in an evocatively dense monochromatic palette.

| Oct 9, 2023

Mami Wata is a marvel to behold and Obasi throws in enough curveballs to this familiar story to keep you off-kilter.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 5, 2023

Cinema’s power to transport is vividly on display in Nigerian writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s eerie but beautiful visit to a rich and unfamiliar setting.

| Sep 29, 2023

The film casts a spell, and the spell persists to the end.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 29, 2023

Manages to distill themes that are at once primal and complex with virtuosic simplicity via the film’s arresting score, its refined story and dialogue and its black and white cinematography, which is more striking than most any modern Technicolor fantasy.

| Sep 28, 2023

A vivid narrative and a dynamic study in color.

| Feb 1, 2023

Through the use of a fable structure, Obasi deftly weaves heavy political, philosophical, and theological ideas together with his keen eye for striking imagery to craft a film that feels both classical and futuristic.

| Jan 26, 2023

The extra time spent developing the film pays off on screen: From its opening title design to the last notes of Tunde Jegede’s score, Mami Wata is a work of art.

| Original Score: B | Jan 25, 2023