Filmmaker Brenda Ogbukaa-Garuba is pulling back the curtain on the making of her new film, To Adaego With Love, revealing the resistance she faced, and the conviction that carried her through. Speaking candidly, she shared how several people warned her against approaching veteran icon Onyeka Onwenu for the project. “People asked me not to go to Onyeka Onwenu for work,” she recalls. But her director insisted, and what followed, she says, was nothing short of transformative. “Onyeka Onwenu brought so much joy to the set.” What some framed as a risk became one of the film’s greatest blessings.
At the heart of Brenda’s creative vision was a story bigger than borders. “I wanted to tell a global Nigerian story that will travel,” she explains, one rooted deeply in Nigerian history yet expansive enough to resonate across continents. Determined to honour both romance and remembrance, she chose an emotionally charged canvas. “I decided to tell a love story set with the backdrop of the Nigerian civil war.” In doing so, she weaves intimacy with history, inviting audiences to revisit a defining national moment through the lens of love, sacrifice and human connection.
To Adaego With Love emerges as both cinematic offering and cultural statement, proof that bold storytelling often requires bold decisions. In choosing collaboration over caution and legacy over limitation, Brenda Ogbukaa-Garuba signals a new confidence in Nigerian filmmaking: one that honours its icons, confronts its history, and tells stories with the courage to travel far beyond home.
WATCH EPISODE: https://vimeo.com/1164603645
