What is City? you say. / It’s the bottleneck where all our stories come together. / … It’s not a place of happiness. It’s not a place of misfortune. It’s the calabash of fate.

Kassanda includes quotes from Patrick Chamoiseau’s exquisite novel Texaco within this kinetic sketch of Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city. Featuring taxi driver Fred—who is ironically a civil engineering student—and Akin who patrols for the transport union, the film flutters between their respective days and worlds in the crowded streets, and a portrait of a city begins to emerge, a city fueled by constant and complex fees and negotiations, the mathematics of which add up to very little return on either Akin’s or Fred’s difficult, dangerous work. Sonically illuminated by cosmic jazz and Afro-beats, Kassanda moves in close and zooms back out to intimately comprehend the contradictions and humanity within the intricate patterns and rhythms of a hustling city.