The financial capital of Nigeria, Lagos, denotes one of the quickest developing megacities across the globe. Each day thousands of individuals get to this big African city to begin a fresh life and create a new, enhanced future. The majority of such people hail from outside Nigeria. Christian and Jean are both educators from Benin. In the street life in Lagos film, the two are shown to arrive in Lagos to look for their affluence, reside, and work in one of the greatly renowned slums across the globe, Makoko. The movie greatly centers on the two foreigners and their endeavors in search of a better life in Lagos. In the movie, Christian and Jean take the viewers through a journey of their adopted metropolis, evidently expressing the fortitude of enterprise and endurance that the inhabitants require to make an income.
A boat or motorcycle can result in an immense difference, and the people with at least a generator or scavenging the trash piles all attempt to make ends meet in the rough, vibrant metropolis. Since slum tourism acts as the trend amid documentary moviemakers in cities across Africa, street life in Lagos is no different. It generates the normal inquiries of the person giving the stories regarding Africa; in what manner and for which reason. In which way are the Africans giving their stories in documentaries such as this, and what is its framework? In which manner is the metropolis, the slums within, and its residents signified in the movie? However, judging by the state of affairs, the representation is not good at all.
Watching the movie gives a feeling of between experimental anthropology and poverty expression since, in spite of the movie maker’s most probable excellent objectives, the movie fails to generate a connection with Makoko and the majority of its residents that are seen all through the movie. The movie contains transitory, at times hauling narratives, though the attraction that holds the watcher to a character or narrative is very weak. The movie gives the viewer a sensation of just getting a glance and moving on. In the task of an anthropologist equipped with a camera, the moviemakers offer no introduction, opinionated, economic, or social background to Lagos or Makoko. In this regard, the global viewer is tossed in the unfathomable end. The street life in Lagos, as a documentary movie impression, could be all jittery and full of stodgy content, but unluckily it does not appear so.
After Jean and Christian have given their accounts of immigration, the moviemakers proceed to the school (in the evening) were deprived, non-speaking, and intrusive children are illustrated. With no enlightenment and nothing clarified concerning them, the movie progresses to the subsequent scene. This becomes the order of the movie as it has many narratives regarding anonymous, ageless individuals with attributes and situations that the viewers do not, in reality, get to identify.
On this note, rather than inviting the viewers to connect with the impoverished slum residents of Lagos that are all shown from the back a Conradesque camera view, the movie calls for the viewers to just observe them. Moreover, Lagos is not well represented in the movie as just a single kind of narrative regarding the metropolis turns out to be the perceived major story, whereas a metropolis ought to have many intricate and intertwined stories.