PHANTOM CAROUSSEL.
PHANTOM CAROUSEL
Directed by: Efosa Osaghae
Here comes the directorial debut of brilliant British Nigerian filmmaker Efosa Osaghae that follows a young man, Bento Moura, being a corporate spy, hunting remote workers across London for productivity crimes. Osaghae wrote the script in 2023, inspired by post-pandemic remote-work anxiety and corporate surveillance. The film blends dark comedy and speculative fiction, highlighting how digital tracking and freelance instability mirror real-world surveillance practices. This is the promise of a talented filmmaker, Efosa Osaghae, with a bright future ahead of him. We caught up with Efosa, in between film festivals:
Q: Tell me more about your film?
Efosa: It’s about this gig worker who has fallen into a sketchy line of work. What I was trying to achieve with this film was to look at the absurdity of modern work and the rituals, the process we have to go through even if we don’t work a conventional 9-5 job. The bleeding between work life and homelife, especially if you work from home. I thought comedy was a great way to express that and to look at how absurd are some of things in modern work.
Q: What challenges did you face?
Efosa: It was a challenge to cover everything we needed to film. It’s about 20 minutes long with so many locations and scenes. We only had two and a half day to shoot it all! There are lots of cars filming around London, so many locations and a big cast. It was hard to contain all that in two and a half days. Also, that was my biggest first narrative effort as a director.
Q: What is this film truly talking about? What do you hope people get when they watch it?
Efosa: Ultimately the film is more of a meditation on how we work. This film is peeling back the veil on people who have unconventional processes. This film looks at the tension between people who have unconventional workflow and people employed who can justify the way they work.
Q: What’s the plan and the vision for this film and what is coming next?
Efosa: Yes, it’s all about the next step. It’s about me moving forward and directing bigger films. This short is a bit of a proof of concept for a TV series I ambition to put together. But for now we submitted to over 150 film festivals this film and I hope it gets more exposure.
