POLLY KAMUKAMA & ANDREW KAGGWA It’s already tipped to be the biggest film out of Uganda since The Last King of Scotland. And last Friday, the anticipation for Queen of Katwe reached fever pitch in Kampala after a 15-minute teaser from the upcoming Hollywood film about Ugandan chess prodigy, Phiona Mutesi, was screened at the [...]
Amakula
POLLY KAMUKAMA Ugandan filmmaker Gary Mugisha’s debut film Jinxed yesterday took home the award for Best East African Short film as the tenth Amakula International Film Festival wrapped up at the Uganda Museum in Kampala. The 15-minute picture set in Kampala’s nightlife beat stiff competition from six other short films to bag the coveted Golden [...]
POLLY KAMUKAMA Amakula International Film Festival will starting next year run a fund aimed at benefiting Ugandan filmmakers. The announcement was made during a press brief held at the Uganda Museum in Kampala yesterday to mark the end of the festival’s tenth annual edition. “We are in talks with our partners to come up with [...]
ROGERS ATUKUNDA Social inclusion is a central tenet in the World Bank Group’s dual goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity. Governments have equally relied on media to sensitize masses against the alienation of individuals based on their social class, race, skin colour, educational status, gender or sexual orientation. The plight [...]
ROGERS ATUKUNDA In a period of 100 days from April 7 to mid July 1994, members of the Hutu majority slaughtered an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda. Since 1994, the Rwandan genocide has gone down history as one of the most horrifying post slavery stories. Olaf Hamelink in his 8-minute short Agasanduka [...]
ROGERS ATUKUNDA When Ugandan author and filmmaker Patricia Olwoch Aciro set out to tell a ‘prison story’, she drew inspiration from her personal experiences. Her 7-minute short documentary My Prison Diary tells the story of Ben, her boyfriend who fled Uganda in search of a better life in the United States only to end up [...]
ANDREW KAGGWA It was unfairly overlooked on the local scene last year, but Ugandan film Bala Bala Sese is certainly beginning to get the attention it deserves. Directed by Bashir Lukyamuzi, the feature film on Wednesday got the honour of opening the tenth edition of the Amakula International Film Festival in Kampala. Moviegoers who turned [...]
POLLY KAMUKAMA Gary Mugisha might still be pursuing his film studies but his career as a filmmaker is almost certainly assured. The 26-year-old was on Thursday the star of the moment as his debut film Jinxed premiered to rave reviews at the ongoing Amakula International Film Festival in Kampala. The 15-minute short was particularly hailed [...]
POLLY KAMUKAMA The gritty lifestyle of Kampala slums has always been a favorite topic for filmmaker Robert Nyanzi. But unlike in his previous works, the 37-year-old filmmaker presents a message of hope and success rather than crime and hopelessness in his latest film, Kai: The Vender. The 17-minute picture tells the story of Kai, a [...]
ANDREW KAGGWA More often than not, a number of films from Africa have been falsely branded ‘African stories’ yet they actually represent a small portion of the continent, usually the community or country in which they are set. By all measures however, Malawian film B’ella by director Tawonga Taddja passes as an all-encompassing African story. [...]