The breakout star of A Naija Christmas, the first Netflix Christmas movie to be shot in Nigeria, might be the food. In scene after scene, the camera lingers on its subjects: spicy jollof rice rendered scarlet by red-pepper-and-tomato pure; piles of crispy fried chicken; onions sliced in perfect circles, lying next to utazi leaves, atop expertly seasoned beef; long-grain rice flecked with chopped carrots and bright green peas. Every tall cistern — or lunch-size container — is filled to the brim with steaming hot food. Characters eat together, dishing out family-style, whether the guests are sitting at a dining table or reveling at a catered holiday event. These traditional Nigerian feasts, small and large, grab our attention and don’t let go.

Early on, we see Mama Agatha Agu (the late Rachel Oniga)’s three sons at the dining room table eating a casual but bountiful meal, with platters of cut fruit, tureens of vegetables and plenty of swallow, a term for starches, like rice or pounded yam. We get even hungrier when we see Kaneng (Ade Laoye) bring her crush, Obi Agu (Efa Iwara), a piping-hot container of his favorite dish, nkwobi (spicy cow foot), for lunch.

At the Christmastime market in Mushin, stall vendors show off stacks and stacks of red and green peppers, small mountains of onions and tomatoes, and baskets full of leafy vegetables — and that’s just a fraction of what’s for sale.

But what really gets our stomachs rumbling is the annual children’s Christmas gala night in Mushin, organized by a group of no-nonsense Lagos matriarchs, the Ladies of Undiluted Destiny. Giant bowls of traditional Nigerian jollof rice and vegetable soup are dished out during the daytime while the kids play and line up to receive presents from Santa Claus. At night, as musicians perform live Christmas music, volunteers remove the lids of shiny, deep-welled chafing dishes to unveil fresh, hot jollof rice and fried chicken.

As if that weren’t enough to make us pull up a food-delivery app on our phone, there’s one last feast: On Christmas Day, we see friends and loved ones gather to enjoy traditional Nigerian foods (including, yes, jollof rice) scooped and served family-style from heaping-full gold-filigree tureens. After seeing the beauty of Nigeria’s Christmas-style feasts, we had to know more about why these foods were chosen for the movie. Director Kunle Afolayan was happy to indulge us.

One thing we love about A Naija Christmas is its emphasis on food. What was your thought process behind how food would play a role in the story?

Christmas in [the movie] is like a carnival. Whenever I’m working on a film, I first like to relate the story to myself and my experience growing up and then look around and see what the neighbors and other families usually would do. Back then, Christmas was the only time some people [would] eat chicken. It wasn’t something we [ate] regularly, and there wasn’t frozen chicken. It was always live chicken that you buy, take to your house, slaughter and cook. That’s why in some of the montages in the film, especially when we introduce Christmastime, I specifically asked to [film] live chickens as some of the cutaway scenes. Because Nigerians can relate to that — chicken is for Christmas. Rice, of course, is very typical.

In one scene, the Christmas gala organizers from Lagos are explaining to the residents of Mushin that they want to hold the event in Mushin this year. But one resident says he doesn't want “small chops.” He says he wants yam flour, jollof rice, well-made semo and vegetable soup. Tell us what he meant by that.

When the boys are eating at Mama [Agatha Agu’s house], you can see that they’re practically eating with their hands. Those are also the typical swallow foods. I’ll give you the indigenous names for them: Eba is made from cassava. Garri is made from cassava. And then you have a pounded yam. Yam flour is what we call pounded yam. It’s bald yam that you pound until it gets solid. Then you eat it with soup... and vegetables or... with okra a lot. You have semovita, which is made from corn. And they mention samosa: These are finger foods, like the ones they serve during cocktail events. So those people in [the] Mushin community were complaining, “Look, if you really want to do stuff here, you have to make real food, and not samosa and finger foods.” [Laughs]

We have our own jollof rice, which goes well with the chicken. There’s this joke about Nigerian jollof rice being the best compared to Ghana’s or Senegal’s. It’s a very common joke. When you see a Nigerian and a Ghanaian talking, the first reference will be: “Your jollof rice is better than mine.”

So Nigerian jollof rice is the best rice?

Tell anybody, “Jollof rice.” They will say, “Oh, have you been to Nigeria?” [As if] to say, “Have you [eaten] Nigeria jollof rice or Ghana jollof rice?” And then of course we eat all sorts of meat and protein: cow meat, goat meat, lamb, ram, everything. So as far as food is concerned, I really wanted the production design to reflect every element in the film.

It’s just gorgeous. We mean, we were hungry after we watched your movie. The charity feast in Mushin looks delicious, and the smaller, fancier Christmas Day celebration with friends and family looks delicious too. So, really, no matter which feast you had chosen, you would be eating very well. Would you say that?

Absolutely. [Laughs] Absolutely.

At the family-style Christmas Day feast, we noticed the tubs of food had beautiful gold edging. Are any of the dishes in the movie special or significant for the holidays?

The only season or period where you see the different [dishes] is when you’re having some sort of ceremony, maybe a wedding or a housewarming, or during festive season — Christmas or the Muslim holidays — or people just doing get-togethers here and there. How we display those foods [in the movie] is the same way they display them at parties and get-togethers around here.

If somebody wanted to kind of replicate this feast in their own home, what would you say they should start with? What are one or two things that you’ve just got to have for a Nigerian feast?

Jollof rice. [Laughs] That is the most popular, and then you can pick one swallow, like pounded yam. So if you have those two, then you’re good. And pounded yam goes with vegetable, and what the West calls “vegetable” is more [like] spinach. But that isn’t what we call [it]; we mix it with pepper and sauce, and sometimes you put shrimp in it, and you can put meat in it. And it has to be spicy.

No matter what you do —

Yes. It must be spicy!

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Images: Nora Awolowo/Netflix