There was no way I could have directed The Train Movie: Damilola Mike Bamiloye

The Train one of the first Nigerian Film to have grossed about a million views on YouTube has been trending since it was released May 3 2020. The writer and Director of Photography for the film granted an interview about the movie. Read on

My name is Damilola Mike Bamiloye I’m the writer, producer, and director of photography for the movie the Train.

So how it all started this was how it all started, for a long time I’ve been having this vision this dream of making a movie for mountzion the story of mountzion particularly the story of daddy Mike Bamiloye so it has been like a passion and desire. But there are limiting factors involved to this kind of project, the first limiting factor was finance you know it’s a big project, you are talking about going back in time, having old school dresses and costumes the wardrobes. So it looked so challenging so at that point I dropped the idea, the idea kept coming but I kept on waving it 

It happened last year we were in Huston Texas Pastor Badru had a secret meeting with Joshua, myself, Evangelist Wole Adeyi, Evan Rex was there and Evan Elvon Jarrett. So the meeting was about planning daddy’s birthday so he gave Joshua and I the assignment of doing something out of the usual he said it could be anything and it was suppose to be a secret. So immediately he said that the Holy Spirit just ministered to me, I just felt strongly in my heart that OK this is the time to make that film the biography of Mike Bamiloye so I started writing the script, I asked daddy some questions, I asked mummy Adepeju Adesayan daddy’s elder sister some question and the script was ready the first draft was ready.

As I was reading through the script I knew that I could not handle this project as par directing wise I can’t direct this film this is way beyond me because, because it has to do with some facts that I may not have knowledge about you know like the events that happened at that time I wasn’t present so there was no way I will be able to interpret it visually so 

Now the challenge was who’s gonna direct the film so I told daddy yemi Adepoju it just came to my mind that daddy yemi Adepoju was there and daddy Isaac Femi Akintunde is an amazing director. I called daddy Yemi who was one of the foundational members of mountzion and I also called Daddy Isaac Femi Akintunde so that they will help in directing. 

Daddy Isaac read the script he was impressed he said this is a very good message. Daddy Yemi Adepoju read the script and he said Dami the script cannot end in this place. Because where the script originally ended was the train scene that was the last scene, that was supposed to be the last scene, so daddy yemi said if we finish here we’ve not done justice to the movie and he told me where the glory of mountzion actually started was at the filming of Agbara Nla so I had to add that. 

And I had fears adding Agbara Nla to what I’ve already written because after finishing the script from my calculation it looked like a 2hour movie so adding another time to it was scary to me but I saw his view and reasoned with him, and I decided to work on that and I added to the scenes, everything that happened in Agbara Nla the location and everything and amazingly it came out more beautifully than I thought.

Kudos to daddy Yemi Adepoju who said don’t just let this movie stop at the train oh because to me I felt the title was the train so I thought it should end at the train.