The first offering from Big Cabal Media’s new anthology series, Zikoko Life, is not a gentle entry. Titled ‘What’s Left of Us,’ the short film is a quiet, simmering, and ultimately explosive interrogation of a marriage where a woman’s body is the last frontier of her identity. It is a story that begins not with a shout, but with a secret: a pack of contraceptives that represents a silent, desperate act of self-preservation.
Directed by Victor Daniel and Olamide Adio, and starring Tolu Asanu and Caleb Richards, the film introduces us to Mariam, an educated woman whose life has been methodically shrink-wrapped to fit the dimensions of her husband’s expectations. His desire is simple and absolute: a home filled with the noise of children, and a wife whose primary function is to produce them. When he discovers her rebellion in the form of birth control, the fragile peace of their home shatters, and Mariam is cast out.
It is in this moment of exile that the film’s title gains its weight. Stripped of her role as wife and mother, Mariam is forced to confront what, exactly, is left. With no income and no identity outside the four walls of her husband’s home, she is a ghost in her own life. This is where the film transcends a simple domestic dispute. It becomes a sharp critique of a patriarchal structure that systematically erodes a woman’s sense of self, leaving her financially and emotionally dependent as a tool of control.
The film’s most telling scene unfolds not in the home, but in the office of a religious leader. Dragged there by her husband for “counseling,” Mariam is subjected to a masterclass in institutional gaslighting. The counsel she receives is a predictable reinforcement of the status quo: a wife’s duty is obedience. Her desire for bodily autonomy is framed as a spiritual failing. The husband’s own transgressions, his infidelity, which the film pointedly reveals, are treated as a footnote. The scene is an unsettling depiction of how religion can be weaponized to sanctify male authority and silence female dissent.
What makes “What’s Left of Us” particularly resonant is that it refuses to shy away from the physical realities of its central conflict. It does not just debate the idea of contraception; it acknowledges its tangible, often unspoken, impact on women’s bodies (the hormonal shifts, the side effects, etc.) where the entire burden is placed squarely on the woman while men remain largely exempt from the responsibility.
https://youtu.be/gi0AyjDFhLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi0AyjDFhLY
“What’s Left of Us” is an uncomfortable watch, as it should be. It is a story about a woman who realizes that the life she is living is not her own and begins the painful, uncertain work of reclaiming it. It is not just a fight against her husband, but against a system that has co-signed his ownership of her. As the opening statement for Zikoko Life, it sets a powerful, unflinching tone, promising a series that is not afraid to ask the most difficult and necessary questions of what it means to live in our society, especially in these times.
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