Nancy Isime‘s first film as executive producer, from GREOH Studios, is a beautifully shot story about the love that holds a family together when life falls apart.
Some films you watch. Others stay with you. Loving Itohan is the second kind.
It opens like the love story you think you already know: a radiant bride, an Edo wedding, coral beads and gold everywhere. You settle in for romance. Then, slowly, the film shows you its heart, and it is so much bigger than a love story.
At its centre is Itohan, played by Nancy Isime, a woman whose world is shaken by loss and by truths she never saw coming. What follows is a story about grief, the quiet kind that stays in a home long after the visitors have gone. It is about family, the people who hold us up and sometimes weigh us down. And it is about love that has to keep choosing to stay, even when it hurts.
You will see yourself in it. In the person trying to hold everyone together. In the things left unsaid at the dinner table. In the slow, uneven way healing actually happens.
A film that looks as good as it feels
The cinematography deserves its own round of applause. Every frame feels deliberate, from the rich reds and golds of Edo tradition to the close, quiet moments where a single look says everything. The camera knows when to celebrate and when to simply sit with a character in her pain. This is a film made for the big screen.
There is a reason it all feels so assured. Loving Itohan is from GREOH Studios, and Jade studio has never been afraid to go big, with daring, genre-bending stories like Gangs of Lagos. This time, GREOH goes deep instead, trading spectacle for the messy, tender feelings we all carry. True to form, it also hands the director’s chair to a fresh talent, Orobosa Ikponmwen, the latest in a line of new directors the studio has backed, from Kayode Kasum to Loukman Ali. And for Nancy Isime, this is her very first project as an executive producer. You can feel how much of herself she has poured into it, in front of the camera and behind it.
Alongside her, Uzor Arukwe, Martha Ehinome Orhiere, Dorathy Bachor, Grace Dein Coker, Chioma Nwosu, Florence Sunday and newcomer Obehi Aburime bring the family to life.
Don’t judge it by the trailer
If the trailer has you thinking you know where this is going, trust us, you don’t. Go with someone you love. Bring tissues. And maybe call your mum afterwards.
Loving Itohan is in cinemas nationwide from 6 November 2026.
BellaNaija is a Media Partner for Loving Itohan
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