The new movie , Whose Meal Ticket? was premiered amidst much glamour and fanfare in Lagos on the 14th of April 2017 at Genesis Deluxe Cinemas, Lekki. Movie lovers came out in their droves to support the flick directed by Grace Edwin Okon and produced by Kehinde Omoru. Stars who graced the premiere include Tana Adelana, Mercy Aigbe Gentry,Ashionye Raccah, Ngozi Nwosu, Layole Oyatogun and many more.
Whose Meal Ticket? Is a movie that addresses salient health issues such as diabetes, skin integrity, conception and lot’s more. It’s an exposé on bad human traits like betrayals, desperation, intrigues, control, treachery and lot’s more. The movie features actors like Ngozi Nwosu, Uti Nwachukwu, Shaffy Bello Akinrimisi, Lisa Omorodion,Tana Adelana, Akin Lewis, Femi Durojaiye amongst others.
Speaking on the movie, the director Grace Edwin Okon said:”The movie is an entertaining film in the sense that everybody in life is hustling for something. We are all trying to get something, we are all trying to achieve something. Everyone here is after their own stomach, where their next meal ticket is coming from. The whole idea was that we wanted to push out health messages without necessarily boring people. So we had to put in the comic element and a bit of drama. Nigerians like to relieve stress, but they don’t really like to be lectured. It is something to trigger the thought in their minds”.
She also opened up on some of the challenges encountered during the shoot of the movie. “Our major problem was audio in the sense that Nigeria is quite noisy. Even if you don’t turn on your generator, your next door neighbor would and there was no how we could stop such people.”
The Executive Producer of the movie, Kehinde Omoru who is a practicing nurse at College of Further Education in the United Kingdom and also founder of Roxanne Care Options Foundation, revealed why she decided to embark on the movie project.
“I am a teacher and a nurse .Deep down in my heart I just want to tackle different types of health conditions in Nigeria though I practice in the U.K. and I see a lot of equipment and professionalism in that sector that we don’t have here. I just want to do as much as I can to bring health promotion to Nigeria.Diabetes, for instance, is a very serious condition and I didn’t want to present it in a scary way that would rather put people off, but for people who are suffering from it to see how the characters in the movie handle it with indifference and ability to contain it, and not for it to contain them.”
On the injection of comedy and entertainment in the movie Omoru said: “Nigeria is full of stress. You cannot bring such health issues and show it to people like that. It has to come in a stylistic manner; there is no how you will watch the movie and not see Shaffy Bello talk about diabetes. You will also see her exercising; that will make people living with diabetes or other health condition to want to do same by getting their jugging kit and exercising. She also pricked her finger to check her blood sugar level. There is also no how somebody will not say, ‘I will be courageous like Shaffy Bello and do mine.”
The movie will officially be released in Cinemas from April 24th 2017.