Leading the crime cinema: Feminist perspectives in King of Boys and 40 Sticks

Female characters in African crime films play diverse roles, influencing the progression of the stories and diegetic situations. This is particularly significant in African crime films, where male characters have dominated leading roles. Through the analysis of Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys (2018) and Victor Gatonye’s 40 Sticks (2020), this article discusses the leading female characters’ embodiment of agency of gendered power in the context of crime genre lawlessness as a useful metaphor for representing women leadership and motherhood. The inferences drawn from observation of the films, interspersed with secondary data sourced from books, journals, online articles and behind-the-scenes documentaries, inform the discussions on female characters’ depiction in the sampled films as material to a critique of gendered antagonisms as microcosms of women within African societies.