Let the Poor Breathe: When a System Refuses to Listen
When a young girl from a poor family goes missing after working for a wealthy household, her parents face a system built to silence the weak. This one is the most overtly social of our films — and the hardest to sit through.
The Premise
A young girl from a poor family goes missing after working for a wealthy household. Her parents go looking for answers and instead find a system that refuses to hear them — not because there's no one listening, but because listening would mean acting, and acting would mean admitting who gets protected and who doesn't.
Let the Poor Breathe is about the gap between the two, and what it costs the people standing in it.
Why This Story
FumingLyon TV exists to tell honest, human stories — the diaspora-focused ones and the ones that never leave Lagos at all. This is one of the latter, and it's the most overtly social film we've made so far. There's no twist that softens it and no comic relief to release the tension. That was the point: some stories don't deserve a way out for the audience if there wasn't one for the people who lived it.
Production
Shot in Lagos, with a runtime of 1 hour 15 minutes, on a budget of roughly ₦9,000,000 — a reminder that a film doesn't need a large budget to earn a difficult subject, it needs a clear one.
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