The Supreme Price

The Supreme Price is billed as a doc­u­men­tary about women’s right in Nige­ria, an angle which is indis­putably accu­rate. Haf­sat Abi­o­la, the lead­ing sub­ject is founder of democ­ra­cy-seek­ing organ­i­sa­tion, KIND. She is shown pur­su­ing her career against the type of sex­ist pre­sump­tion that would have us tweet­ing our out­rage here in the West. Her own broth­er, a smil­ing and oth­er­wise endear­ing char­ac­ter, thinks she should know her place. ​“Your husband’s house is where you’ll get your prop­er train­ing on how to be a woman,” he smug­ly intones.

Joan­na Lipper’s doc­u­men­tary is, how­ev­er, a mul­ti­ple issue film. It attains its pow­er by root­ing Hafsat’s strug­gle against a crosshair of dif­fer­ent forces, tak­ing the time to atten­tive­ly and vivid­ly express their source. Using archive footage she tells the sto­ry of Nigeria’s mil­i­tary polit­i­cal history.

For Haf­sat has inher­it­ed an intense and fas­ci­nat­ing famil­ial lega­cy. She is the daugh­ter of MKO and Kudi­rat Abi­o­la – the for­mer was elect­ed pres­i­dent of Nige­ria in 1993, the lat­ter was killed for democ­ra­cy-moti­vat­ed activism. Lip­per spends time set­ting the tone of the gen­er­ous if flawed nature of MKO’s char­ac­ter and the sig­nif­i­cance of the elec­tions that he won. They were wit­nessed by inter­na­tion­al observers and declared the freest and fairest elec­tions in Niger­ian history.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the del­i­cate green shoots of democ­ra­cy were steam­rolled near­ly imme­di­ate­ly by a mil­i­tary upris­ing. Lip­per shows the con­trast between the effort expend­ed into cre­at­ing jus­tice and the bru­tal ease of demol­ish­ing it, delib­er­ate­ly drum­ming up an under­cur­rent of anger.

Haf­sat lived through it all and Haf­sat, who is clever, deter­mined and com­posed, is the per­fect con­duc­tor of a film about the broad strokes of mil­i­tary oppres­sion and the spe­cif­ic strokes of sex­ist oppres­sion. ​“I han­dle it by cry­ing, she han­dles it by con­tin­u­ing her work,” says Hafsat’s sis­ter under­lin­ing the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters that can be forged out of loss and dan­ger. Joan­na Lip­per teach­es Using Film For Social Change at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. In her The Supreme Price star, she has found a film sur­ro­gate with the cre­den­tials to lead that mission.