About
Water is a feature-length film about two teenage girls who have to overcome their differences and combine forces to survive. Set in Nigeria, the film touches on the importance of water conservation and energy saving.
Through this film, the executive team hopes to begin a conversation about the importance of water conservation and energy saving in the country. It is an ambitious project and we need all of your help to bring this film to light.
How You Can Help
We need to raise $50,000 to make this film a reality. This amount will get us from pre-production to post. Any amount will help get us that much closer to our goal.
Feel free to share with those in your network who might be interested in being a part of bringing this project to life.
We hope you can help us do our part to make a brighter future for the teenagers of Nigeria and across the world.
Your contributions will be used for:
- Paying our talent (all of whom are local teens and young adults from Nigeria)
- Paying our talented, diverse, philanthropic crew from Chicago and Nigeria.
- Equipment needed for filming, lighting and sound
- Generators (for overcoming frequent power outages).
- Flights and transportation
- Accommodations for cast and crew near shooting locations
- Feeding the cast and crew while shooting
- Post-Production (Editing and coloring the film)
- Marketing and Distribution
By becoming a backer, you will help us create much needed content for the teens of Nigeria. The film explores very universal themes that everyone can relate to and can take something away from the film. You will be helping also create an experience for the teens and young adults in Nigeria that will stay with them throughout their lives.
All of our cast will be Nigerian teens and young adults. Our hope is having them work on this project helps inspire them to continue to pursue enriching, meaningful work in their lives.
To show how much we appreciate your support via donations, we’ve selected a number of exciting swag, including tickets to the premiere (Nigeria or Chicago), associate and executive film credits, and more. We will have a backdrop at both premiers of every backers name to show our gratitude for your help in bringing this film to light.
The Impact
There is a huge lack of content for teenagers in Nigeria. This is a need we would like to begin to fill with this film. The film touches on overcoming differences, and what life is like in other parts of the world. We hope to show that we are all much more similar than we are different. To accept and embrace out differences is what can help us grow both individually and as a whole.
We plan to show this film across Africa, on the heels of the Susan O’tuga’s successful teen cooking show called Cookie Cooks (currently going into its third season and aired on DSTV, African Magic Channel 154). Susan had been passionate about building up teenagers and giving them the platform she never had. As for the United States, we will go the festival route and hope to build momentum and give this film the attention it deserves.
This film will also be one of the first in Nigeria to feature an all-teenage and young adult cast. Most films in Nigeria are aimed towards an adult audience. As a result, our first round of auditions we got young kids and teens sending up very mature and adult audition videos. We hope this film will start a trend in filmmaking in Nigeria and will show these teens that it’s alright to just be a teen!
Lastly, we also hope this experience inspires the members of our cast to set their sights high and engage in enriching, fun, important work in their lives moving forward.
P.S. This film is being spearheaded by wonderful, talented women around the world!
Meet the Team
Susan O’tuga
Susan O’tuga, the writer/producer of Water, is a successful TV producer in Nigeria. The Cookie Cooks is currently going into their 3rd season. Susan works with Leadership Search Nigeria who will be helping produce the film. She directed and produced The Circle, an episodic InstaSeries that was one of the first of its kind.
Dena Altamore
Dena Altamore is the director of this film. Dena worked on all four of Dick Wolf’s Chicago shows (Chicago Fire, PD, Med, and Justice). She started her own company two years ago called DNA Collaborative, which seeks to bring interesting, powerful stories to life.
Michael Hoday
Michael Hoday is the cinematographer of this film. He has worked with some of the largest corporations and artist's like Chance the Rapper. His work and professionalism speak volumes for what he will bring to the project. His dedication to his craft will shine through on this project and make it what we know it can be.
Martin Stebbing
Is our Sound man on the film. Originally from London, Martin ended up in Chicago taking his knowledge of sound engineering and mixing with him. He's worked with various local Chicago bands including Wilco and Poi Dog Pondering. He's worked with Kartemquin, an esteemed Chicago Documentary house and various other projects. He started doing location and production work while at Tower records. He has since found a passion for capturing sound in various environments around the world. We are excited to have him on board and can't wait to see what his talent will bring to the film.