Bola Ogun’s ‘The Water Phoenix’ Perfectly Captures A Feeling We Can Identify With

Fascinated by the beach, as she always swam in the Caribbean sea, which is not far from her home in Barbados, Bola Oguns, as a little girl, nursed the idea of being a mermaid.

The film tells the story of Anya, a mermaid trapped in a vaguely familiar yet essentially foreign environment.

Written and directed by Bola, she stars in the film as Anya, and describes it as a passion project.

In a chat with BlackGirlsNerd, Bola tells the inspiration of the story line.

She said,

I was working through some personal things when it came to my relationships with men and what I thought it was supposed to be versus what it actually was. For me I found a way to harness that to make the story true, and essentially it’s just an allegory – an allegory of somebody believing in the idea of someone coming to save them from whatever prison they’re in.

In the short, it’s a physical prison but the allegory is an emotional prison of feeling like you’re either in a depressive state or there is this feeling you have of a cloud hanging over you. But if you just have this one person come and be with you it will go away, and when that doesn’t happen, what do you do?