Mo Abudu, executive producer and casting director on The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, has announced that the film has been officially selected for the Centrepiece programme of the 51st Toronto International Film Festival, where it will have its world premiere. In a video message sharing the news, Abudu called the selection an incredible honour for every member of the Baba Segi collective, the film’s cast and crew, and for Nigerian storytelling more broadly.

The film adapts Lola Shoneyin’s acclaimed 2010 novel of the same name, which follows the four wives of Baba Segi as long-buried secrets threaten to unravel the fragile order of their shared household. Abudu says TIFF’s director of programming described the film as one that tackles serious issues with empathy and humour, in a manner that is smart but accessible, a line she says the team couldn’t have asked for a more meaningful endorsement of.

Staying true to the novel’s roots was a deliberate choice, Abudu explained. The film is performed predominantly in Yoruba, the language its characters live, argue, and love in, with full subtitles and plans for dubbing into multiple languages so audiences everywhere can experience the story as it was written. She frames the film as a distinctly Nigerian story with universal reach: one about love, family, power, jealousy, service, and identity, offering a window into a polygamous household while ultimately centering the relationships that connect people everywhere.

Baba Segi’s Wives joins four other African titles in this year’s Centrepiece lineup: Rwandan director Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo’s Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Ben’Imana; Rafiki Fariala’s Congo Boy, a character study of a young rapper in Bangui; Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Berlinale FIPRESCI winner Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars; and Future Tense. The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10–20, 2026.