LIFE’S SMALL DECISIONS TOLD ON AN EPIC SCALE
WHEN filmmaker Shola Amoo sat down to write a script loosely based on his own experiences as a foster child, he had something epic in mind.
He didn’t want to tell a “minor” story about his experiences as a British Nigerian, who was fostered in a rural community before moving to London.
He wanted it to be as big as it felt to him and the other British Nigerians he interviewed who had similar experiences.
The Last Tree is the semi-autobiographical story of young Femi, a British child of Nigerian heritage who was fostered in rural Lincolnshire before moving to inner London to live with his birth mother.
As a teenager Femi struggles with the culture and values of his new environment, both on the streets of inner London and at home with his Nigerian mother.
“Sometimes I feel like when you do get a narrative depicting certain minority communities it almost feels minority in scale, it feels minor,” Shola says.
“You don’t get an odyssey, like I feel The Last Tree is.
“That was really important to me; an epic scope. Even though it’s a very specific story, in that specificity it has such universal themes and it works on quite an operatic scale.”
For actor Sam Adewunmi, who plays a teenage Femi and who is himself the child of a Nigerian immigrant mother, the story was all too relatable.
“I just felt I knew who Femi was and I understood his journey and challenges.
“I knew many people who had also experienced part of his story. I grew up in London myself so the journey that he goes through, of finding himself and working out who he is in all the different spaces that he goes in, were so true and so honest to what it’s like being a young man in London.
“It’s a British Nigerian story, which I don’t think gets as much light or recognition, and it’s also a story about adoption, that we don’t really hear about, a young kid being displaced and trying to find himself in new spaces.”
Femi’s journey, from a white rural community to a council flat in a diverse area of south London, challenges his identity and a string of bad choices take him far from his childhood in Lincolnshire.
He is recruited by a local hustler and starts smoking weed. Eventually a teacher confronts him about the disastrous path he is on.
“There is a fragility to the coming of age process,” the director says.
“He’s seen the various paths he can take and there are people who represent a certain lifestyle in each path, and it’s a film that is from a single perspective so you really feel the weight of every decision that he makes.
“We talk about these kids that can get into situations – it’s really that easy, it’s really one decision, especially if you’re in a particular environment, you really can be one decision away from that.”
Shola hopes his film will encourage members of the audience to question their own perceptions, ideas and biases.
“There is the classic thing of knowing thyself and that is what I would like the audiences to take away, that you can uphold all of these different identities that make a person, and not to be as judgey. There are different facets to people.”
THE Last Tree is released in UK cinemas on September 27.