Adaora Nwandu | Say My Name / 2009

two worlds

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown screenwriter (Kofi?), Adaora Nwandu (director) Say My Name / 2009 [12 minutes]

 

I’ll be honest, for a white US boy following the dialogue of this Nigerian dialect British film is a challenge, but now that I’ve watched it about four times, I do think I understood most of it—although the real major issues of this film were quite clear from the beginning. I warn you strongly against attempting to read the AI sound-recognition rendering into English.

     Chris and Ricky (Nahum Bromfield and Ayo Fawole) are black, gay lovers. But in there gritty urban world, it is difficult to be open about their sexuality. When Ricky returns home, Chris is furious. He has fully come to terms with his identity and accepted almost any term of abuse with which, as a homosexual, might be thrown at him.

      But Ricky still lives in two worlds, on the lowdown, pretending to his friends outside that he is a ladies man while sharing his bed each night with his lover Chris. Ricky demands that he have a cover, arguing sexual openness is “white man’s politics”; but this time he has gone to far. While Chris has been out shopping for their dinner, he sees Ricky on the street, walking up to him simply to greet him. Ricky pretends not even to know him, and doesn’t even call him by his name when Chris greets Ricky.

     The action is truly devastating to the man whose entire world has changed after meeting Ricky, and who has come to terms with his identity.

      Even when he confronts his lover, however, Ricky is still ready to demand his space and cover, and when Chris further confronts him about it, he is ready to run instead of fully discussing it.

      But this time Chris refuses to budge, suggesting that if Ricky leaves through the door we will never be welcomed back. He is tired of hiding, of Ricky’s pretense about women, and particularly refuses to be in a world where the man he most loves won’t even recognize him on the street.

      In one of the most powerful moments of this short, but truly memorable drama, he demands that Ricky simply say his name, not only his given name, Chris, but who he is as a gay man.

      But Ricky argues for the pretense of female love, as both evidence of his virality and his survival on the streets.

      “So you will pass me on the road like I was nothing? What kind of love is that? You chose them, them over me, and it hurt.”

      He continues: “I need a man, a soldier, someone who’s got my back all the time.”

      Again he repeats: “Say my name.”

      Ricky again responds: Chris.

     But Chris answers quite differently: “Faggot, queer, coon, sodomite, cheap man. You see, Ricky, there ain’t nothing in reality that I don’t already call myself. I’ve taken those courses in loving myself, turned over to a blessing. After all my pain, my tears, my heart, I told myself never get in this this with motherfucking cunt who made be fall down about who I am again. Only you Ricky took me on that road again. …So say my name, because no matter what anyone thinks, I know who I am.”

      Chris reaches for the keys as the credits appear.

 

Los Angeles, June 22, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).