Title: Haƙƙi
Company: Iyantama Multi-Media
Producer: Hamisu Iyantama
Director: Hafizu Bello
Year: 2018
Haƙƙi is a good movie compared
with other movies, but not a standard of what a film should be for Kannywood industry.
One thing admirable about the movie is its core subject matter, which radically
departs from the much-criticized love theme of which common narrative is: a boy
meets a girl, they fall in love but there is a feud between the families;
they’ll manage to get married in the end and live happily ever after.
The film runs two items
concurrently: exploitative labor practice and cache of female criminal
who use their body to lure male victims into their den and rob them at gun point
in collaboration with other men.
At a more pronounced level the
movie shows the role of labor union and is an exposé of poor working condition and
company intrigues. Jabir, the dedicated labor union rep in a leather factory,
puts his life on the line to defend the rights of his men. Scheming follows and
sabotage; some elements within the union and the company management work to
stop him. One of the factory workers slips and knocked his head. He is taken to
the clinic from the factory in concussion, the company grants stipend as his medical
bill. When he finally dies, the management is not forthcoming with the payment
of his benefits.
Jabir is set to fight for that.
But would he give up in the face of fierce adversary and attempts at his life?This
is what defines the movie and for that, it is a very good theme selection worthy your dollar to watch. Despite
that, however, the film cries for what the industry lacks in terms of technical
aspects.
I believe the industry people
have their side of the story, but money apart, from what I can tell they don’t
seem to appreciate professionalism, and unwittingly producers like to disallow competent hands
they hire to execute their work. At another level, while producing movies, they
don’t seem to have global audience in their mind. Otherwise you wouldn’t have
found basic errors in most of their films such as atrocious subtitling. This, I
understand, comes from want of appreciation of good English usage and unawareness
of the implication bad English subtitling can have on indigenous-language films.
What’s more, the film does not
look at environmental damages that companies cause. Labor union plays an
important role, but it is cast in a light too good for what obtains in reality. If that is deliberate, then we can understand, otherwise no deal.
