Hausa film industry and the ‘menace’ of appropriation of Indian romantic movies

Against many odds, the Hausa film industry alias Kannywood has come of age. The film industry survives several pressing challenges from within and outside Nigeria, perhaps more than its counterparts anywhere else. Although there is no denying that the quality of its output has significantly improved, its survival has little or nothing to do with that. Many critics, including the Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MOPPAN) leadership, call ‘bad’ films, are still being made. Romantic movies, laden with a typical and predictable pattern of the love triangle, song and dance sequences among other appropriated and plagiarized Bollywood modalities, remain the favourite of producers and arguably that of the audience. However, according to some surveys, such films lack merit in the realm of critical film discourse in Africa and beyond. This article is set out to discuss this issue through a content analysis of a recent film titled Sareena (Nuhu 2019). The movie, released in 2019, is a bloated, implausible melodrama and a direct mimicry of a famous Indian film, Kaabil (Gupta 2017).