Gideon Okeke stars in Japan-Nigeria coproduction 20 Pound Dream

20 Pound Dream, the new movie from TED fellow, CLAM magazine founder and Relentless director Andy Amadi Okoroafor, is now streaming first on Showmax. 

Africa Movie Academy Award winner Gideon Okeke (BBNaija, Tinsel, Relentless) stars as Kene, who owns a kung fu studio in Nnewi. He is a disappointment to his family, who want him to help his father run the trading and manufacturing business he founded on a 20-pound dream after the Biafran War.   

Kene’s lover, Nnenna (Chioma Idigo from Halita), convinces him to take a job as a police department informant at the other end of the world: Yokohama, Japan. The Afro-Chinese triad is making inroads into the ports there, so the police need a fresh face who has never been to Japan before, someone they can mould discreetly into their force as a ghost to the community. 

In Yokohama, Kene is lost, badly informed and ill-prepared for what he needs to do as an informant. He is also soon torn between his long-distance relationship with Nnenna and the possibility of a new life with Mio (Tomoko Hayakawa) in Yokohama. His police work and its bloody consequences will take him to the darkest part of himself and back home to Nnewi for revenge.

Watch the trailer

“It’s a film about self-discovery, destiny, choice and how family can be the catalyst for the good and the bad that eventually happens to us,” says Andy. “Kene’s life and dreams are far away from the 20 pound dream his father and uncle restarted their lives with after the Biafran war, but, as we will discover, everything is tied to that dream.”

Shot on two continents, in Yokohama, Enugu, Nnewi, Onitsha, and Awka, the arthouse drama also stars Africa Movie Academy Award nominees Obi Okoli (Men on Hard Way), Tina Mba (The Set Up, Isoken), and Swanky JK (Living in Bondage); Senegalese-born Cesar nominee Aïssa Maïga (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, The African Doctor); and Japanese cast Kenjiro Otani and Shinsho Nakamaru.

Andy and Gideon previously worked together on the 2010 film Relentless, also starring Jimmy-Jean Louis (the Haitian in Heroes) and Nneka, which opened the Africa International Film Festival and screened at the BFI London Film Festival. 

20 Pound Dream joins the stellar line-up of Nigerian content on Showmax, including The Ghost In The House of Truth, directed by Akin Omotoso, which has just been nominated for Best Film and Best Director in The Africa Movie Academy Awards, and Africa Magic’s popular telenovelas Riona and Enakhe. Showmax’s first original series being shot in Nigeria, I Am LAYCON, starring BBNaija S5 winner Olamilekan “Laycon” Agbeleshe, is currently in production.

20 Pound Dream is now streaming first and only on Showmax in Nigeria.