In a festival lineup crowded with spectacle, Leaving Ikorodu in 1999 draws its strength from quiet observation. Written and directed by British-Nigerian filmmaker Rashida Seriki, the short follows ten-year-old Momo (Motunrayo Abiola-Oloke) on her final day in Lagos. Her mother has migrated to London and sent for her, leaving her aunt Fade (Tomi Ojo) and uncle Mahmoud (Tobi Bakre) to drive her to the airport. What unfolds is less a goodbye than a reckoning. Set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s 1999 democratic transition, Seriki transforms a family car ride into a meditation on departure, belonging and the uneasy pull between past and future.

The journey moves through iconic Lagos landmarks—a railway station, a gas pump, a post office—each rendered in a grainy green-tinted palette that turns memory into texture. The film’s production, supported by the Film4 and BFI Future Takes Fund, reinforces Seriki’s position as one of the UK-Nigeria generation’s most promising visual voices. At 18 minutes, the film avoids melodrama, instead letting the emotion rise in glances, pauses and gestures. The vintage Mercedes that carries the trio becomes both literal vehicle and metaphor—an archive of nostalgia, friction and love. Letterboxd viewers called it “beautifully shot” and “heart-wrenching,” while others noted its restraint.

One reviewer wrote, “I didn’t anticipate the maternal pain—it made me appreciate the film’s ability to find my way to those feelings.”

Critics have been divided about its narrative scope. Some felt its commentary on migration stayed surface-level, that nostalgia overwhelmed story. Yet even those critiques acknowledge its haunting atmosphere. What Kept Me Up described it as “a film about the perverse power of nostalgia,” arguing that its imperfections mirror the way memory itself falters.

The performances carry much of that emotional ambiguity. Tomi Ojo, best known for Netflix’s Far From Home, plays Fade with weary conviction, her doubts about sending Momo abroad growing scene by scene. Tobi Bakre (Gangs of Lagos) anchors the film with understated realism, while a cameo from The Woman King’s Sheila Atim frames the story as both intimate and generational.

By the time Fade murmurs, “Migration is the same theft they’ve been doing for centuries,” the film lands on its most provocative idea—that leaving can also mean loss for those who stay. Seriki doesn’t over-explain. She leaves the thought open, suspended in the same Lagos air her camera captures with such affection.

For AFRIFF audiences, Leaving Ikorodu in 1999 is the kind of short that lingers quietly after the credits. It may not announce itself with high drama, but its restraint is its power. Seriki’s film feels like a bridge between eras and continents—between the ache of the ones who left and the resilience of those who stayed.