Principal photography has wrapped on Daddy Bear, the faith-based family drama co-directed by Hajarat Alli and Korede Azeez and produced by Fuchi Nwaturuocha. The Abuja-set film follows Fahd, played by Jammal Ibrahim, a father raising his newborn and pre-teen daughter after losing his wife during childbirth. The project, backed by CcHUB in partnership with Africa No Filter, is now in post-production and slated for release later this year in community cinemas.

Shooting wrapped on August 25. The film also stars Ummi Baba-Ahmed, Ame Aiyejina, Dera Osadebe and Ijapari Ben-Hirki, and is lensed by cinematographer Fadamana Okwong, known for his work on The Boy Who Gave. Beyond its central story of fatherhood and grief, the film also examines Muslim family life in contemporary Nigeria.

Daddy Bear began as a story by Hajarat Alli, brought into the writing room at Cardinal StoryWorks, the script development unit of Cardinal Productions founded by Azeez. The two developed the screenplay together before the project secured funding through Africa No Filter's storytelling initiative for faith-focused, gender-equitable media. Alli previously wrote Monitoring Spirit, an award-winning short film from her time in the 2021 cohort of the EbonyLife Creative Academy. Azeez, whose credits include the Netflix-UNESCO anthology film Halima's Choice and her feature debut It Blooms in June under the First Features Initiative, comes off 2024's well-received With Difficulty Comes Ease, and has called co-directing Alli's debut feature a real journey she's glad to have been part of.

Producer Fuchi Nwaturuocha, co-founder of Riverside Productions, has been attached to Daddy Bear since the screenplay stage, following her earlier work producing With Difficulty Comes Ease and Ekene Som Mekwunye's Ewo. Her connection to the material runs personal, having grown up with a widowed father after losing her own mother during her pre-teen and teenage years. That experience is informing how she's thinking about the film's life after production too, with community cinema being explored as both an audience-development and distribution strategy, built around smaller, shared screenings rather than a conventional theatrical run.

More details on Daddy Bear's release plans are expected in the coming months.