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Welcome II The Terrordome is a fast paced, vibrant, action thriller set in the decaying and racially segregated city of the near future. Employing a powerful mixture of historical narratives, the film charts the life of the McBride family over three traumatic centuries. Running parallel to the main themes of the simmering sexuality and interracial love are underlying stories of gang violence, police brutality and revenge. The visual style is strong and unflinching, the message biting.
(“Onwurah Filmography" - http://brit-black-pack.tripod.com/id1.html)
1995 Verona Love Screens Festival in Italy (Audience Award), Birmingham International Film Festival (1st Prize), Cologne Film Festival (1st Prize)
In Ngozi Onwurah’s drama Welcome II the Terrordome, the Nigerian-British filmmaker melds past and present, filmic and factual as she explores race relations in the futuristic dystopia of Terrordome. A drug- and gang-ridden community caged off from the white world, Terrordome is home to Anjela, her brother Spike, and his expecting white girlfriend Jodie. When Jodie’s white ex-boyfriend discovers that she had “crossed over”, he returns to the Terrordome for revenge. His revenge results in an all-out race war as Anjela transforms from nurturing mother to militant fighter. Onwurah’s film captures the plight of the female protagonists as they are faced with the violence incurred not only by the limitations of race, but also the challenge of crossing colored boundaries. Welcome II the Terrordome recognizes the role of women while demonstrating how the future is compromised when history has not yet been reconciled. Screened from the Verona Love Screens Film Festival in Italy to the Cologne Film Festival in Germany, this political action thriller is one of the first independent Black British feature. It captures Onwurah’s experimental and (auto-)ethnographic essence evident in her other works such as Coffee Colored Children (1988) and The Body Beautiful (1991).
(Jacinda Tran, 2012)