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Africa Film Fest Australia I Do Not Come To You By Chance

4 September 2025

In the Playhouse

Cinema

Nigeria | 2023 | English and Igbo | Comedy | PG

Kingsley has the smarts but no prospects for a job after university. Burdened with family responsibilities, he turns to his charismatic uncle, an email scammer who lures him into a web of deceit – a decision that will change the course of his life. Winner of the Africa International Film Festival Audience Choice Award Winner of the Africa International Film Festival Audience Choice Award, presented in Lagos, Nigeria.

Screening on opening night as part of Africa Film Fest Australia 2025.

I admire the gumption to write a book and adapt a film like Ishaya Bako’s adaptation of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come To You By Chance.

In The Seats

Useful information:

A universal story of family, ambition and greed, set in the dark underbelly world of email scamming

Based on Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's best seller I Do Not Come to You by Chance, the film tells the story of Kingsley, a first-born son, who struggles to provide for his beloved family when his ailing father's income dwindles. Possessed of a fine mind but poorly connected in the Nigerian job market, Kingsley takes a job working for his notorious uncle, Cash Daddy, the larger-than-life mastermind of a thousand email scams. As Kingsley falls reluctantly under his mentor's spell, he discovers his own innate flair for the art of the confidence trick.

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, and the Betty Trask First Book Award, I Do Not Come to You by Chance was named by The Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009 and described as "a lively, good-humored and provocative examination of the truth behind a global inbox of deceit."

Director Ishaya Bako’s passion for filmmaking cuts across fiction and documentary narratives. He studied filmmaking at the London Film School where he graduated with a distinction and has since gone on to direct over a dozen short films and two award winning documentaries – ‘Fuelling Poverty’ and ‘Silent Tears’. His films have been screened at film festivals in Seattle, Durban, New York, Toronto, Lagos, and Clermont-Ferrand.

Presented by Sydney Opera House and Africa Film Fest Australia

Cast and credits

Directed by
Ishaya Bako

Written by
Chika Anadu and Ishaya Bako

Cast

Paul Nnadiekwe

Blossom Chukwujekwu

Funny Bone

Francis Duru

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