
Witness - Street Life in Lagos
Lagos is Nigeria's financial capital and one of the fastest growing megacities on earth, pulling in thousands of new arrivals every day, many from outside the country entirely. Jean and Christian, two teachers from Benin, are among them, and this film follows them through Makoko, the floating slum where they now live and work. They travel the waterways by canoe, cut through traffic by motorbike, and show how a generator or a stretch of rubbish heap can become someone's livelihood. The film stays close to their daily routines rather than narrating from a distance, watching how people without formal infrastructure build an economy anyway, trading, scavenging, teaching, hustling. Lagos itself functions as the film's real subject: a city expanding faster than its services can keep pace with, absorbing migrants from across West Africa who arrive with almost nothing and improvise a way to stay. Through Jean and Christian's eyes, the city's chaos and its opportunity look like the same thing.