The Brothers Who Made Virginia Woolf the Talk of Cannes

There were other commonalities, most obviously colonialism. From the mid-19th century until 1960, Britain controlled Nigeria, and the countries remain deeply connected. (English is Nigeria’s official language.) Present-day Nigeria and England in the 1920s “are eerily similar,” Chuko continued, as he expanded on what he saw in Woolf’s novel, “specifically how conservative the cultures are.” This connection comes devastatingly to the fore in the film when Clarissa’s father berates a server for not wearing white gloves while waiting on her and her friends. The younger people had just been animatedly discussing Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart,” an anti-colonialist landmark, yet remain deferentially quiet during the abusive outburst.

By transposing the story to Nigeria the Esiris have foregrounded the colonialist history that surfaces in the book with its repeated mentions of India and, by extension, the British Empire. It’s a brilliant interpretive move, one that’s all the more powerful because of how the Esiris use Woolf’s narrative fragmentation to suggest this crushingly divided world. The young Clarissa grows up into a comfortably cosseted woman who lives in a large, waterfront house filled with servants. Unlike her father, Clarissa tends to smile at the people who do her bidding. Yet while she wears her privilege lightly, the weight of history presses down nevertheless. There’s pathos to how unknowingly Clarissa seems to drift along, but not an iota of sentimentality.

Arie Esiri focuses more on the visual elements of their filmmaking, and he only read Woolf’s novel after his brother had finished writing the script. After deciding to make the movie, they started watching films for inspiration, as is their custom, Arie explained, to understand their own ambitions for the project and how they would approach it structurally. They watched Michelangelo Antonioni, and spoke admiringly of Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi.” (Their first feature is in the Criterion Collection.)

The brothers shot “Clarissa” on 35-millimeter film, drawing talent both from abroad and from the robust ranks of Nigeria’s film talent; the country’s industry is one of the largest in the world. Most of the movie unfolds in Lagos, where a large construction project looms over her house like a threat from the future. The Esiris filmed the pastoral scenes of Clarissa’s past at a resort run by their father, a businessman turned fine-art painter. Their mother, a former lawyer, founded a library. The parents didn’t let the brothers watch TV when they were young.

The Esiris already have a sense of what their next movie will be. It’s based on a true story about servants who are accused of theft in the house where they work, an idea that Arie has been thinking about for some time. “None of them fess up to it,” he explained. “And then they hire a babalawo, which is ——” Chuko broke in, “a witch doctor.”

Throughout the interview, the brothers, amid thoughtful pauses and shared glances, effortlessly passed the conversational baton back and forth. At one point, we talked about the tricky logistics of sharing directorial duties and how on set Chuko tends to be the more social of the duo while Arie stays with the camera. This team approach has served them well and led to an acclaimed movie that from its first striking shot to its last, expresses a soaringly harmonious joint vision.