Crocodile

C.J. Obasi, whose Mami Wata announced him as one of the most formally daring filmmakers working in Nigerian cinema, returns with something more commercially accessible but no less precise. Crocodile — selected for the Tribeca Film Festival 2026 alongside One Woman, One Bra — is a Lagos political thriller about a state attorney (Toni Tones) who uncovers evidence linking a sitting governor’s office to a series of murders disguised as accidents.

Toni Tones has been building towards a performance like this for years. Her attorney — brilliant, exhausted, and terrifyingly competent — carries the film with an authority that makes every scene she is in feel like it is happening for the first time. Obasi shoots Lagos with the same high-contrast black-and-white aesthetic he deployed in Mami Wata, and the choice pays dividends — the city’s wealth and desperation coexist on screen with a moral clarity that colour might have diffused.

Bucci Franklin as the primary antagonist brings a corporate menace that is more chilling for being entirely believable. The conspiracy at the film’s centre does not require any supernatural architecture — it is recognisably, depressingly Nigerian in its mechanics.

The final act rushes slightly, and one late revelation is telegraphed too clearly. But Crocodile is taut, intelligent filmmaking that knows its audience is grown.

Verdict: Obasi consolidates his position as one of Nigerian cinema’s most essential directors. Toni Tones is the performance of the year.