Trigger Warning: Those who’ve experienced sexual assault may find one sequence wherein this is discussed triggering.
How many people figured out what they wanted to do at an early age and figured out how to turn it into a reality? Maybe you end up right where you expected, maybe you took an alternate path that put you somewhere else. Maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. But, in each case, that first dream lingers as a driver for where you end up. The ability to hold onto that dream or recognize that it’s not for you is as important a part of growing up, of maturing, than any other part of individual development. What are you willing to endure, what are you willing to give up, and what are you willing to become in order to get where you want to go? This is a key element of Crocodile, the co-directed documentary by Pietra Brettkelly (Yellow Is Forbidden) and Nigerian collective The Critics (Ogun Ola: War is Coming) that’s having its North American premiere in the Viewpoints section of Tribeca Film Festival 2026. Jumping through time and between reality and fiction, Crocodile uses the experience of The Critics to posit that dreams can only cross over if we possess the conviction to make them real.
A scene from the documentary CROCODILE. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Established in Kaduna, Nigeria, filmmaking collective The Critics is comprised of siblings and cousins, bound together through a desire to create. What began as an accident (just kids playing together) when the five — Raymond J. Yusuff, Godwin Josiah, Ronald Yusuff, Victor Josiah, and Richard Yusuff — first met in 2012, has transformed into an actual business making short films and more with attention garnered from around the world. Through a mixture of captured footage and fully-realized film footage from some of their short films, Crocodile invites audiences to observe The Critics from 2019 to near-present as they juggle limited resources, familial expectations, personal drive, and several unforeseeable obstacles in the pursuit of making the thing they do for fun into a respected profession.
For those curious, Crocodile is neither an introspective look at the work of the busy collective nor a behind-the-scenes exploration of how they accomplished making so many short films within the confines of their original, limited filmmaking resources. In a way, that would be too pedestrian an approach for the driven collective. Rather, we are embedded within the group, given little in terms of orientation, and are let loose with them. In the early portions, we sit in on meetings in which they vote on who will play what role (votes which include the younger, perhaps not-yet-potty-trained members of the family), listen to them discuss the reception they receive from family, and watch them develop shots, all while portions of their work are intercut, serving as either transition to a new aspect of the film or demonstrating what they were working on. This approach makes the whole of the film less about any specific person, empowering Crocodile to drill into the intrinsic reason why they do what they do (though there are personality and vision clashes as well as other familial issues to address).
A scene from the documentary CROCODILE. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
In one scene, well into the film, members of The Critics are having a discussion about what make their films African. Are they the concepts within the stories? The perspectives? The locations? Or something else? They discuss this in comparison to general Nollywood productions, the nickname for the Nigerian-based film industry which tends to cater to a specific audience in terms of approach to films and their content, focusing on horror, relationship conflicts, and material related to the diaspora. The Critics, however, lean more toward science-fiction, with their films catching the eye of JJ Abrams (Star Trek: Kelvin Timeline Trilogy) who, we learn in the film, sends them tools to aid them in their work. This scene gets to a critical element of Crocodile — the discord between the concept of tradition and modernity. Tradition is, by and large, the upkeep of rules established by previous generations which the next are expected to uphold. Such conservation of conservative thinking prevents growth and progress. Here, the discussion about what makes a film African elicits one of the conversationalists to mention that they don’t even speak the language of his people, yet he is African. The desire to make films grinds against familial expectations and traditions because it’s seen as something interesting in the moment (no one appears to deny their collective artistry) but not built for longevity and success. Perhaps because The Critics seem to fly in the face of tradition or because (some members suggest) that what makes them African is built into every facet of their storytelling, this conversation shapes the notion that being filmmakers is something they’ve been called to do, something that exists within each member and their works allow them to bring it out.
What’s frustrating is that, if this is the first introduction to The Critics’s work, one doesn’t really know which film they are looking at when portions are integrated into the documentary. Impressively, something fairly pedestrian will be happening before us and then, through clever editing, the scene will shift to something from their oeuvre. Their official YouTube channel doesn’t have any new videos since December 12th, 2024, when they announced their first feature film is in development, but you can see many of the films referenced within Crocodile such as The Pseudobulbar Effect; Ogun Ola: War is Coming; Timothee; Another StarWars Story; and others. But knowing when the films were released is less important than understanding what they signify relative to the narrative of the documentary. The films speak to the how The Critics see themselves, how they represent Nigeria, and, most importantly, their growth over time. Artists who don’t push themselves, don’t grow. For some members of The Critics, being an artist is how they define themselves and the opportunity to make art is one they can’t let slip through their fingers, no matter how much fear or uncertainty may exist in the industry or their community.
A scene from the documentary CROCODILE. Photo courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Though entirely untraditional in their approach, one does find themselves drawn in by The Critics’s passion and endurance. What they endure (limited technology resources, uncertain electrical access, recovery post-sexual assault, falling out with members), while also finding themselves on the global stage between boosts from filmmakers like Abrams and Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit), being the subject of interviews, and even finding their work the subject of a Museum of Modern Art exhibit in a different country, would be excessive for several lifetime. Perseverance amid trouble, unbridled joy amid success. They are artists, the dreamers of dreams, and the breakers of ceilings for a new generation of filmmakers.
Screening during Tribeca Film Festival 2026.
For more information, head to the official Tribeca Film Festival Crocodile webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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