SYNOPSIS

Four years ago, EMEM EKPO (28) dropped out of med school and moved to New York City to become a writer. Now, she works a dead-end job as a medical copyeditor while writing her memoirs—or rather, not writing, as she suffers from a bad case of writer’s block.

One of three daughters of Nigerian immigrants, and the only one of her siblings without a PhD, Emem feels like a failure. But when she gets an email from a literary agent who wants to read her memoir, all that’s about to change. With only three days to submit, Emem buckles under the pressure and blows the chance of a lifetime. To make things worse, bedbugs drive her out of her apartment and she gets fired from her job, all in a matter of days.

Cut to Emem, broke, sleeping on her doctor sister IDARA’s (32) couch. It’s not the first time she’s needed rescuing, and Idara wants her sister to grow up and take responsibility for her life. But Emem doesn’t want another day job; she’s a writer, something Idara will never understand.

Tensions run high as an emergency call comes in from their mother, ELIZABETH (58). Their grandmother is sick back home and one of the girls needs to help bring her to the States for treatment. With Idara and MFON (30) busy at work, it’s decided: Emem is going to Nigeria.

When she lands, Emem steps into a huge rift between her mother and AUNTY GLORIA (62), a rich businesswoman, who hates how her sister meddles in family affairs from abroad. She says they have a good hospital in Calabar, a live-in nurse, JUSTINA (47), and she’s paying all the bills. Plus, GRANNY (84) doesn’t want to leave Nigeria.

What starts off as a two-week trip becomes more complicated when Emem realizes that, until her mother convinces Aunty Gloria and Granny, she’s stuck there.

Comedy ensues as she readjusts to life back home, 17 years after she left. She can't cook or speak the language well anymore. People call her mbakara, or American, which she hates; but gradually she finds her place helping Justina, reading Granny the Bible, reconnecting with old friends, and hanging with her cousins VICTORIA (26) and KUFRE (33).

Magically, Emem’s writer's block vanishes. But as her fingers fly over the keyboard, her laptop crashes. She takes it to a cybercafé, where the manager THOMAS (26), an old childhood friend, fixes it—wiping the hard drive and erasing her memoir.

Emem is devastated. With nothing to show for herself, and no ability to help Granny, she feels like more of a failure than ever before.

But when Justina gets hurt in an accident, Aunty Gloria reveals she’s broke and can’t afford to hire a new nurse. When the family must decide what to do with Granny, Emem steps up to the plate.

She gains a new sense of self as a caregiver, and comes into her own as a young woman mediating her mother and Aunty Gloria’s squabbles, falling in love with Thomas, and refereeing a fight between Kufre and his embattled wife, HELEN (32), a victim of domestic violence.

But as Granny's health declines, will Emem have what it takes to keep her safe and hold their family together? On her journey of self-discovery, she finds love, faces loss, and discovers a story waiting to be told.

Producers

FUNDRAISING campaign

Back in 2010, Iquo traveled to Nigeria to conduct research for a multidisciplinary memoir of her late mother, Elizabeth Essien, who died of cancer in 2002. She interviewed family and friends, took photos, wrote essays, and shot footage documenting her mother’s story and her family history. In 2013, she created an e-book of photos and essays called Elizabeth’s Daughter in Words and Pictures.

Since then, Iquo has reimagined her memoir as a gallery exhibit sharing 100 years of Nigerian history through the lens of her family’s story—alongside a residency for African womxn artists whose work promotes historical and cultural preservation.

In 2021, we raise $35,000 to secure the land in Calabar, Nigeria where BACK HOME will be shot, as the inaugural project of the Elizabeth's Daughter Memoir Gallery & Artist Residency.

To learn more about the campaign for the Elizabeth's Daughter Memoir Gallery & Artist Residency, and the history of Iquo’s family’s land in Calabar, visit iFundWomen.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

In 2010, I started writing Back Home while I crashed on my sister's couch in New York. The city was the best and worst place on earth; full of so many creative opportunities, but a difficult place to create or live in if you're financially insecure, like me. At the time, I was working as a freelance medical copyeditor to pay the bills, but the work was boring and didn't feed my creative side. I had left film school broke without a degree, unsure about whether or not I'd ever make a film again.

Without an apartment, boyfriend, or job I loved, I flirted with the idea of moving to Nigeria—where I'd spent time traveling and interviewing people for a memoir of my late mother, Elizabeth, who died of cancer. It was the place where I felt closest to her, largely because my grandmother—after whom I was named, and the spitting image of my mother—still lived in the house where she raised Mommy, who took my sisters and I there on family trips "back home” as kids.

While writing the memoir, I spent the most time at Granny's house, sitting with her in the kitchen, eating fresh sugarcane from her farm, or watching the monsoon rains soak the earth. It filled my creative well and, in the process, I realized I still had stories to tell. So I went back to film school.

In my thesis year, I received a text message from my cousin that read: Granny is sick, please call home. By the time I did, my grandmother had already died. She was 100 years old by then, and it had been two years since I'd last seen her. I deeply regretted not having gone home for a visit and couldn't help but feel like all the excuses I'd made—from lack of money for a ticket, to school, to life—were just that, excuses. I'd somehow missed the point of life and love and family. Yet we all, my sisters and I, came home for the funeral, a celebration the size of which I'd never seen.

In many ways, BACK HOME is an autobiographical story with lots of creative license. It's the story of a struggling writer who dropped out of her MFA program, works a low-paying job, and crashes on her sister's couch after fleeing a bedbug-infested apartment. Everything changes when her grandmother gets sick and she goes back home to Nigeria.

The film conflates the events of several of my trips home to write the memoir, during which I fell in love, bookended by the sickness and death of my maternal grandmother.

Through meaningful moments shared with her grandmother and new love, Emem learns that the meaning of life goes beyond material things like an apartment, book deal, and a career. In the process, she discovers that her unique experiences are exactly what make her story worth telling.

-- Iquo B. Essien, Writer & Director