If you remove YouTube from the movie industry, people will go hungry – Nollywood’s Ruth Kadiri

Speaking in an interview with BBC Pidgin, the renowned filmmaker said that the video streaming platform, which has quickly become an avenue to distribute movies, is now a major source of income for independent filmmakers.

“If you remove YouTube from the industry, apart from filmmakers and content creators, people will go hungry.

“YouTube is an opportunity for many filmmakers to make money and that’s what is happening now. Because YouTube is what is feeding people now,” she said.

Narrating her experiences venturing into YouTube, Ruth Kadiri described how she was left frustrated by the restrictions in the mainstream production process. She wanted a space where she could freely express her creativity.

“I have been a producer for a long time, but there are too many rules and regulations during production.

“So I called my team and told them that I wanted an opportunity to express myself. For instance, if I see something online, I want to learn it and after learning, I want to upload it somewhere,” she said.

Despite initial discouragement from others, Kadiri said she saw it as an opportunity to reach a broader audience and to learn from the experience.

“When I travelled to give birth, I was bored and started watching a lot of musical videos and noticed that some people put their films on YouTube. I told myself that I would come back to try it. Some people discouraged me and told me that there was no money in it. But because I needed a platform to express myself and tell my stories, I decided to try it.

“I told my team that we should shoot, and if the film is not good enough, we will learn and use it as a learning process,” she said.

Since then, she has produced several movies on YouTube, with varying degrees of success.