Skip to content
What's After the Movie?

Jump to
What's After the Movie?
Genres Genres, movements and visual styles, from film noir to found footage.

Nollywood New Wave: Meaning & Definition in Film

The Nollywood New Wave, or New Nollywood, is a contemporary movement in Nigerian cinema defined by significantly higher production values, cinematic ambitions, and a focus on theatrical and global distribution.

  • 2 sections
  • 1 min read
  • Updated
On this page 2 sections

A Break From the Straight-to-Video Model 🇳🇬

The term Nollywood New Wave describes the evolution of the Nigerian film industry from its ‘Old Nollywood’ roots. The traditional Nollywood model, which made it the second-largest film industry in the world by volume, was characterized by:

  • Very low budgets.
  • Rapid production schedules (often just a few weeks).
  • Shooting on consumer or prosumer video cameras.
  • A distribution model based on selling films directly to the public on DVD and VCD.

Around the mid-2000s, a new generation of filmmakers began to emerge, aiming to create films that could compete on a global stage. This marked the beginning of the New Wave.

Hallmarks of the New Nollywood

This new movement is defined by a clear shift in both technical execution and business strategy:

  • Cinematic Production Values: A strong emphasis on high-quality visuals and sound. This includes the use of professional digital cinema cameras, sophisticated lighting, and professional sound design and mixing.
  • Theatrical Ambition: These films are made to be seen on the big screen. Their emergence coincided with the growth of modern multiplex cinemas across Nigeria.
  • Bigger Budgets & Longer Schedules: Productions have significantly larger budgets and more conventional shooting schedules, allowing for more polished and developed work.
  • Diverse Storytelling: While still embracing popular genres like romance and comedy, New Nollywood films often tackle a wider range of subjects with more nuanced and complex storytelling.
  • Global Reach: Filmmakers are actively targeting an international audience, including the Nigerian diaspora. This has led to major distribution deals with streaming giants like Netflix, which has heavily invested in Nigerian content, bringing the New Nollywood to a global audience.

See the vocabulary at work in real films

Look up any movie for its ratings, cast and crew, box office run and where to watch, or read the full plot with the ending explained.

Browse movies
Genres

More Genre & Style Terms

Entries filed on the same shelf as Nollywood New Wave, each with the one-line answer first. They are the words that usually come up in the same conversation.

All 330 terms

  • Peplum film

    Italian studio epics draped in Greco-Roman tunics spun myths into pulp entertainment during the late 1950s boom.

  • Creature feature

    A genre showcasing monsters or animals as central antagonists, emphasizing horror and spectacle.

  • Hong Kong New Wave

    The Hong Kong New Wave was a transformative film movement in the late 1970s and 1980s led by a new generation of formally trained directors.

  • Medium Shot

    This waist-up framing balances environment with character expression for dialogue-driven scenes.

  • Sports drama

    A genre that intertwines athletic competition with character-driven storytelling and emotional stakes.

  • Satire film

    A satire film uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize foolishness or corruption in individuals, institutions, or society.