BOLANLE AUSTEN-PETERS Opens Film Village

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• Welcome To The BAP Film Village

There is a new address quietly changing the way big Nigerian films are made. Far away from the familiar Lagos locations, busy streets and rented houses that have served as movie sets for decades, somewhere in Epe, Lagos, a different kind of Nollywood world has been taking shape.

It is vast. It is ambitious. It is designed to look like another time and another place. And it belongs to one of Nigeria’s most accomplished theatre and film personalities, Bolanle Austen-Peters.

When Austen-Peters publicly unveiled the facility in August 2024, she revealed that it occupied more than 10,000 acres of land, with rolling hills, huts, greenery and other structures created for filmmaking and recreation. She also announced that the facility was available for filmmakers to hire.

That single revelation immediately placed the BAP Film Village among the most ambitious purpose-built filmmaking locations in Nigeria.

And there is something particularly fascinating about it: the film village did not start out looking like a movie village. It started as forest.

According to Austen-Peters, when she and her team first encountered the property, it was largely covered by greenery and dense forestation.

There were no elaborate movie sets. No carefully constructed traditional houses. No carefully designed palace compounds. Just a huge expanse of land. Then came the transformation.

Austen-Peters explained that she called on Bisola Omolade, giving her an opportunity to take on a project she had never undertaken before. The land was cleared, construction began and, within a few months, the structures that audiences would eventually see on screen had emerged.

This is perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of the BAP Film Village. It was not simply a case of finding a beautiful piece of land and calling it a film location. It was about creating a world. And that distinction is important.

For years, Nollywood has been famous for its ability to produce movies quickly and creatively, often transforming ordinary houses, streets, hotels and public spaces into believable cinematic locations.

But as Nigerian filmmakers increasingly target international audiences and more ambitious productions, the need for specialised infrastructure has become more obvious. A film village provides that infrastructure.

Instead of spending weeks searching for a palace, village, forest, marketplace or historical settlement, filmmakers can build and control the world they need. That is the idea behind BAP Film Village.

The facility received perhaps its biggest advertisement through Austen-Peters’ historical epic, House of Ga’a.

The Netflix film, starring actors including Femi Branch, Funke Akindele, Toyin Abraham and Adedimeji Lateef, required an environment capable of transporting viewers into a historical Yoruba world. And that is exactly what the Epe location provided.

Austen-Peters revealed that House of Ga’a was filmed at the BAP Film Village, pointing to its rolling hills, huts and expansive natural environment as part of what made the location suitable for the production.

Suddenly, what many viewers thought was somewhere far away from Lagos was actually being created within Lagos State.

That is the magic of a good film village. It makes geography disappear. A location in Epe can become an ancient Yoruba kingdom. A constructed hut can become a royal residence. An open field can become a battlefield. A hill can become part of an entirely different historical landscape. And because filmmakers control the environment, they have far greater freedom to determine how their stories look.

The most eye-catching number attached to BAP Film Village is undoubtedly 10,000 acres. To put that into perspective, that is an enormous footprint for a film production environment.

It is also why the facility has frequently been described as one of the biggest film villages in Nigeria. It is not merely a collection of film sets. It is a landscape.

To understand why the film village matters, one has to understand the woman behind it. Bolanle Austen-Peters did not arrive in filmmaking as a newcomer.

Long before she began making movies, she had established herself as one of Nigeria’s most prominent cultural entrepreneurs through Terra Kulture, her Lagos-based arts and culture institution.

She built a reputation for bringing Nigerian history, culture, music and theatre to the stage through ambitious productions.

Musicals such as Saro the Musical, Fela and the Kalakuta Queens and Moremi the Musical demonstrated her interest in large-scale storytelling and elaborate production design.

Her transition into cinema was therefore almost inevitable. She brought with her a theatre director’s understanding of sets, costumes, performance, space and spectacle. That sensibility has become increasingly visible in her films.

Her filmography includes productions such as 93 Days, The Bling Lagosians, Collision Course, Man of God, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and House of Ga’a. The film village is, in many ways, the physical extension of that philosophy. She has always been interested in creating worlds. Now she has a huge piece of land on which to create them.

One of the biggest mistakes would be to look at BAP Film Village and see only a location where actors come to shoot. Its potential is much bigger. A purpose-built film village can serve several functions simultaneously. It can become a production location. It can host film crews. It can accommodate historical and cultural reconstructions. It can serve as a destination for excursions. It can provide opportunities for creative professionals.

And, potentially, it can become a tourism attraction in its own right. Austen-Peters has already positioned the facility for commercial use, specifically mentioning filmmakers and excursions. That opens up an entirely different business model.

Imagine students visiting to learn about filmmaking. Imagine tourists walking through recreated historical settlements. Imagine filmmakers arriving from Ghana, South Africa, the United Kingdom or the United States to shoot African stories without having to construct every location from scratch.

Imagine fashion photographers, music-video directors and television producers using the landscape. The possibilities are enormous.

The emergence of BAP Film Village is part of a bigger story.

For a long time, Nollywood’s biggest strength was its ability to improvise. Give a producer a camera, a few actors, a house and a storyline, and somehow a movie would emerge. But the industry is changing.

Streaming platforms have increased the pressure on Nigerian productions to compete visually with films from other parts of the world. Audiences have also become more sophisticated.

They notice production design. They notice costumes. They notice locations. They notice when a film looks expensive and when it looks rushed. This has made infrastructure increasingly important.

The rise of film villages signals a new phase in Nollywood. Filmmakers are no longer simply looking for locations. They are beginning to own the locations.

That gives them control. And control is one of the most valuable commodities in filmmaking.

There is also a business argument behind the idea. Every major production involves location costs.

A producer may have to negotiate with property owners, secure government permissions, close roads, manage crowds, transport equipment and repeatedly return to locations. A purpose-built film village can reduce some of those challenges. Once a set has been created, it can potentially be reused.

A village constructed for one film can appear in another. A palace can become another king’s palace. A marketplace can be redesigned. A road can become another town.

This creates an asset that can generate value beyond a single production. It is one of the reasons the film village model could become increasingly important to Nigeria’s entertainment economy.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of BAP Film Village is something money cannot easily manufacture. Its natural environment.

Austen-Peters has described the original property as being covered in greenery and dense forestation, while the finished film village incorporates the natural terrain into its visual identity.

This is particularly useful for historical films. Instead of constructing an artificial forest or relying heavily on digital backgrounds, filmmakers can work with real landscapes.

For epic productions, that can make a major difference.

The camera can move. Actors can travel across large spaces. Crowds can be positioned naturally. Scenes can be staged on a much larger scale. The environment itself becomes part of the storytelling.

There is also something strategic about the location. Epe has increasingly become one of the most interesting development corridors in Lagos State.

Away from the densely built-up areas of mainland Lagos and central Lekki, Epe offers something increasingly difficult to find in Lagos: space.

And space is exactly what a film village needs. You cannot convincingly build a historical kingdom on a tiny plot of land.

You need room for sets, equipment, vehicles, actors, extras, production teams and future expansion.

The Epe location provides that breathing space.

For Lagos, which is already Nigeria’s entertainment capital, having a major film production facility within the state’s expanding eastern corridor could prove significant.

Austen-Peters’ recent filmmaking trajectory has shown a clear interest in stories rooted in Nigerian history, identity and culture.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti brought the life of one of Nigeria’s most important historical women to the big screen. House of Ga’a went even further into the world of historical Yoruba storytelling.

Her film village now gives her a physical infrastructure with which to pursue even bigger stories. That could be its ultimate value.

The facility does not have to remain associated with one film. It can become a permanent production ecosystem.

And if properly developed, maintained and opened to other producers, it could become one of the most important pieces of private infrastructure in Nigeria’s film industry.

~ By Emmanuel Daniji