‘Extra Mile’ Wins Best Film At Toronto Festival

Extra Mile, the inspiring diagnostic movie produced by Five2 Media and Entertainment, has been honoured with the Best Film by a Female Filmmaker – Nollywood Award astatine the Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival (TINFF) 2025.

The almighty production, spearheaded by enforcement shaper Solate Ovundah-Akarolo and produced by Joy Grant alongside Ovundah-Akarolo, captivated audiences and judges alike with its heartfelt storytelling, stellar performances, and innovative attack to Nollywood cinema. The triumph cements Five2 Media and Entertainment’s estimation arsenic a unit wrong Nollywood, reinforces the industry’s increasing beingness connected the satellite stage, and highlights the originative powerfulness of women down the camera.

The movie tells a stirring communicative astir relationship and the choices that trial it. Mercy Johnson, Jim Iyke, Lilian Esoro and different Nollywood veterans present performances that bring some value and tenderness to the screen. What carries the movie beyond its prima powerfulness is its honesty, the mode it explores betrayal and resilience with a clarity that is astatine erstwhile intimate and universal.

“TINFF’s designation is an encouragement for pistillate voices successful Nollywood to support breaking boundaries and telling stories that matter,” said shaper Joy Grant.

The grant was received connected behalf of Five2 Media and Entertainment’s by Canada-based communications lead, Oraye St. Franklyn, who conveyed the company’s gratitude and dedication of the grant to each subordinate of the formed and unit who worked tirelessly to bring the moving communicative to life.

For the film’s enforcement producer, the grant goes deeper than prestige. It signals a turning constituent for the industry, wherever pistillate filmmakers are not lone participating but starring and being celebrated for the almighty stories they tell. In Toronto, wherever African cinema and the diaspora conscionable an planetary audience, that connection could not person been clearer.

Nollywood has agelong commanded attraction for its sheer output, but moments similar this widen its scope into planetary cinema, opening doors to caller audiences, wider organisation and caller conversations. Extra Mile stands arsenic impervious that Nollywood stories question well, carrying the value of section realities portion touching connected themes that resonate crossed cultures globally.

The grant is not conscionable a triumph for 1 movie oregon filmmaker. It is simply a marker of Nollywood’s dependable emergence and a reminder that erstwhile women measurement into the framework arsenic storytellers, the presumption is broader, bolder and richer. Extra Mile is some a solemnisation of trade and a committedness of what is yet to come.

Among the postulation of stars who attended the star-studded grant and Gala event  from crossed the satellite were Nollywood’s Ayo Makun, besides known arsenic AY and Julius Agwu.