Animated feature films are still relatively rare when it comes to Nigerian cinema – specifically those made by Nigerians, to be hopefully appreciated by global audiences. We’ve profiled a few shorts, but this is a very rare instance of a feature-length animated movie by Nigerian creatives to be covered on this website, and to be released in the USA.
Titled “The Secret Princess,” is is adapted from the book with the same name, by filmmaker Segun Williams, via animation studio TransTales Entertainment, funded in part via a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.
Written and directed by Williams, “The Secret Princess” is summarized as a tale of a princess who goes through rejection and is forced to live her life out in the jungle, while a farmer’s son lives a life of luxury as the prince, in her place. The story promises to tackle many topical issues in subtle ways, including the discriminatory treatment of female as compared to male children.
Official synopsis reads: A prince falls in love with a mysterious girl, but he is unaware that she is a real princess whom her parents swapped with him at birth. A king desperately seeking for a male to heir the throne becomes wary of his crown. This makes the queen swap their girl child with the boy child of a poor farmer, in secret. Sade, the secret princess, and her adopted mother, are accused of being witches after the farmer disappears. Sade and Nike (the farmer’s wife) escape into the Jungle were they meet talking animals that help them survive.
The “entertaining and educative family movie” stars Florence “Cuppy” Otedola as Princess Sade, and Desmond Elliot as King Adede.
The film is now available for American audiences via rental ($4.99) or purchase ($9.99) on Amazon Video. You can also purchase a hard copy on Blu-ray and other HD formats, directly from the film’s website at http://www.TheSecretPrincess.com.
The filmmakers say that the movie is made in 4k resolution which makes it one of the few animated movies with an IMAX standard.
Check out the trailer for “The Secret Princess” below. It’ll very likely appear crude in terms of how polished the computer generated animation itself is, especially for those of you who are so used to far more technically *advanced* work from American studios – Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, etc. But we all have to start somewhere. Making an animated short film is quite a task; making a feature-length animated film, especially with limited resources, is a monumental task; so keep all that in mind as you watch the trailer:
