Mirror Boy
2010, 80 minutes
The mirror can show you faces you've never seen before.
The Mirror Boy is an enthralling journey through the picturesque terrains of Nigeria, as seen through the eyes of a London-born 12 year old boy, Tijan. On the 13th of June and wholly out of character, Tijan gets involved in a street fight in which a boy is hurt. Convinced that Tijan needs discipline, TINA, his mum decides to take him to Nigeria to live with her sister. In the power blackout that greets their arrival in Lagos, Tijan encounters what he considers to be a simple apparition- a boy smiling at him in a mirror and vanishing afterwards. However, seeing the same boy in a crowded street market the next day sets in motion a chain of events that culminates in him getting lost. While the panic-stricken MARIA struggles with the inept Nigeria Police Force to find her son in an intriguing game of survival brinkmanship, Tijan is left alone in the company of the enigmatic MIRROR BOY who is only visible to him. As a bruising spiritual rite of passage, the MIRROR BOY takes Tijan on a magical journey through the dark belly of the forest. After a series of edge-of-the-seat adventures in the forest, Tijan emerges the next day, a bewildered boy; for whom the lines between reality and fantasy; between the physical and the spiritual have been forever blurred. His arrival at a time of mourning for a small kingdom in Eastern Nigeria upsets the evil machinations of a desperate Queen who literally takes him to the edge. A cathartic climax helps Tijan to unravel the mystery of the MIRROR BOY. It also provides him with a rather mystical explanation for the way his life has cascaded from the 13th of June towards this inter-twined fate with a father he has never met.