Handsome Chima Okoroji, the youthful brain behind Nollywood hit movies such as: Coming to Africa, Blind Fury, Tears of a Mother, Dying to Live, Joy of a Mother, D-8 and a host of others, is poised to make another daring move in the nation’s motion picture industry.
Okoroji is currently on locations lensing his long-awaited soap-opera-Lost Soul with some established and up and coming thespians from Nigeria and other West African countries.
According to the soft spoken filmmaker, Lost Soul is a youth-oriented project that was inspired by the many daunting challenges facing them in a society that is fast neglecting them. “At the end of the day, what we want to achieve with Lost Soul is to help the youths in our society regain and reclaim their rightful positions in the scheme of things. The older generation has dealt our youths a heavy blow and will continue to do so, until we fight back by claiming what is ours. By the time this soap hits the airwaves, it will expose the many challenges and sins of our youths. The dirty things the society has pushed them into doing, just to survive. With this project, the orientation of an average Nigeria youth would begin to change for the better. Imagine IBB, saying that the youths cannot be trusted with leadership positions, that is an insult on us. How old was Gowon when he ruled us and completely changed the face of Nigeria?”
On when the soap would hit the air, embittered Okoroji, lamented the dearth of funds for the project. “It boils down to what I was saying earlier about youths’ like me not being encouraged or supported by the society or government. This is a self sponsored project and I have spent several millions of my own money prosecuting this laudable project. All efforts to get corporate bodies to be part of this project, has failed woefully. In fact, as I’m talking to you, we’ve called off shoot, because of paucity of funds. So, as soon as proper funding comes our way, we would complete the soap and put it on air for Nigerians and the rest of the world to watch and applaud. It’s painful that a lot of youths with good ideas and projects to execute cannot find support from corporate bodies and well meaning individuals. Our youths are daily suffering and smiling’’.
Meanwhile, the twisted story of Lost Soul, revolves around a young graduate who left school and couldn’t secure a a paying job several years after leaving the university. He eventually fell in ‘lust’ with a married woman, because of her fat purse and comfortable life style “It’s a complicated and twisted storyline about how our harsh and unfair society drives youths into unhealthy ideas and behaviours’’.
