My friend Sodiq Adeojo dreamed of a different life

He may be serving a life sentence, but Sodiq wanted more than just a life on the streets, as my film will show parliament
    • Jump to comments ()

SODIQ - TEMP TRAILER from Adeyemi on Vimeo.

I was 19 when Sodiq Adeojo banged on my mum's door on a Peckham housing estate and asked me to help him set up a football team. He was only 12, and just wanted to have something to belong to that wasn't a gang. Football can give you that credibility so that you're accepted in social circles without having to prove anything. We asked local people to sign up to support our team, Peckham Youngsters FC. We had to use old kit and battered balls… but we did it. The first year, we were dreadful – we lost every match. But in the second year we won the local league and kept on winning. It was amazing. I'd always dreamed of being a film-maker so in 2008, when Sodiq was 16, as part of a university project, I started making a film celebrating the success of the football team in Sodiq's life – I didn't realise it would turn out to be such a tragic film.

At that time, Sodiq dreamed of being a doctor and was planning to go to college. I left to focus on film school. When I came back, I couldn't understand how it had all gone so wrong. Sodiq, now 20, is starting a 30-year jail sentence in Feltham Young Offenders Institution for murder.


Why did it happen? It's complicated. When you become involved with life on the streets you're given a new name, a new identity and you start losing touch with reality – you lose touch with yourself. Sodiq went to college but people knew about his street identity so he couldn't escape it. You get to the point where even if you want to turn back, you can't. You can't see a way out. You get dragged deeper and deeper. For me it was different. I was very strong-headed growing up and wasn't prepared to be like everyone else. I wanted to be myself and keep my identity and become well known for being me, my dreams were bigger than the street fame of Peckham.

I'm not a campaigner, I'm a film-maker. I returned to Peckham to finish a very different documentary to the one I started five years earlier and to find out why Sodiq's life turned out as it did.

Telling the story in a sophisticated way was important to me. I wanted people to see the person behind the headlines, the boy behind the label, because he was an innocent 12-year-old with dreams of helping others, who was the inspiration behind the football team that had such a positive impact on others. Street life takes away your identity but so do labels like gang member, drug dealer or murderer. What makes Sodiq so different from you or me or your brother or son?

The purpose of this 44-minute documentary is to discover what the turning point was in Sodiq's life and how this is a microcosm of wider societal issues in Britain today.

The clip from the film shows Sodiq's caseworker taking us to the murder scene – that pivotal place where Sodiq and Sylvester's lives converged. At that moment everything changed. The question it asks is was this fate or could it have been different? What does it take to stay true to your dreams and yourself?

Meeting Sodiq changed my life. Without him I wouldn't have set up the football team and I wouldn't have made the first version of the documentary that got me accepted into the National Film and Television School. This final version is my graduation film.

Named after the protagonist, Sodiq, it will be screened in parliament on Thursday. It will be shown to MPs and guests, including barristers, solicitors and footballers and will be followed by a panel debate chaired by Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. It never occurred to me that I could craft a film that would be shown in parliament and affect people's view of society.

It has been a right-of-passage film for me – I needed to make this and the story's not nearly over yet. Sodiq's appeal is yet to be heard.

Latest posts

Today's best video

Today in pictures