Popular From Kenya

In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.

Shooting on 16mm film in Mozambique, director Ico Costa explores the textures of human behaviour as he follows young men who wonder what lies beyond their immediate surroundings. In the fragments of conversations captured in the Maputo market, a recording studio and on coconut trees, we find daily routines and tedium lead to chit-chat on desire, money and hope. In the interplay between performance and document, poetry emerges from fleeting everyday moments.

An African fable of sisterhood, envy and ancient evil. The story of Ala and Coa from the Leopards tribe. When her sister outshines her once again, Coa meets a mysterious entity, the morning star and the bestower of gifts, that can grant her wish...

Apostles of Cinema follows Frank, DJ Black, and Rehema — three devoted film workers in Tanzania — as they reintroduce a classic piece of the country’s film history to their audiences of working class cinephiles. We join them, alongside Maangamizi: The Ancient One (2001), on a journey through the labyrinth of informal libraries, studios, and cinemas that exist to keep film and film culture alive. A testament to the profound cultural value of film when made truly accessible.

Jo, a witty 9-year old terminally ill girl is taken back to her rural village to live out the rest of her short life. Her only comfort during these dull times are her dreams of being a superhero, which prove to be something her rebellious teenage sister Mwix, overprotective mother Kathryn and the entire village of Maweni think they can fulfill.

Journeying beyond the global headlines around 'Sudan,' the last male northern white rhino in existence, and explore the painful emptiness of extinction through the eyes of Sudan's three primary caregivers. Teetering on borrowed time and with his health in decline, Sudan's looming death and the uncertainty of employment that it will bring hangs over the heads of our three dynamic characters. Their only hope to save the species that they love - and perhaps their livelihood - rests fully in the success of a last resort IVF experiment.

The stakes escalate in a longstanding conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, as unresolved historical injustices and the impact of climate change come to the forefront.

Kena and Ziki long for something more. Despite the political rivalry between their families, the girls resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.

In Old Moshi, Tanzania, a head is missing : the skull of Chief Meli, who fought the German colonial occupation of his territory and was executed in response to his resistance in 1900. This animated film, based on archival sources and oral accounts provided by Chief Meli's grandson, sheds light on the racist roots of physical anthropology and ethnological museums.

In the remote Turkana region of Kenya, 13-year-old Nawi's aspirations of higher education are shattered when her father plans to marry her off to a stranger to ensure the family a substantial amount of livestock.

As word spreads that there is a serial killer at large who continues to commit murder, an off-duty police officer must return an elderly witness who lives in a remote part of Uganda back to town. Along the way, the policeman gives a ride to an injured man. On the way to the city, the passenger tells the policeman the events that led him to end up injured in the middle of the road. But as we travel with these mysterious characters in the car, director Loukman Ali shows us that the stories they tell are only fragmentary and partial versions of the events that took place, and that perhaps there are truths buried beneath each of their words.

A coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar. Denge, a young freedom fighter meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution escalate.

Subira, is a young, free-spirited girl from the rural areas of Kenya. She seems to have her whole life ahead of her, that is, until the death of her loving and encouraging father. Life hits her hard afterwards, with traditional submissive expectations preventing her from leading the life she desires.

Bereft of earthly memories, a new arrival in the afterlife struggles to recover the past, in this poetic fantasy that offers a dark reflection on personal atonement in the shadow of Kenya’s violent past. Imagine waking up one day in a barren wasteland. Amnesia leaves you clueless as to your whereabouts, your identity, and how you arrived. A small group of strangers welcomes you to a nearby oasis resort, and they reveal to you the nature of this new reality. You are dead. And this is the afterlife. This is what happens to Kaleche (Nyokabi Gethaiga) in the enigmatic opening sequence of Kati Kati, writer-director Mbithi Masya's poetic first feature film.

Eleven-year-old Aisha wants to fish for a living, but her mother thinks that fishing should be left to men. Aisha’s life transforms when fisherman Hassan decides to teach her how to fish.

Pili lives in rural Tanzania, working the fields for less than $1 a day to feed her two children and struggling to manage her HIV-positive status in secret. When she is offered the chance to rent a sought-after market-stall, Pili is desperate to have it. But with only two days to get the deposit together, Pili is forced to make increasingly difficult decisions with ever-deepening consequences. How much will she risk to change her life?

In the search of a livelihood, Juliana, a young mother, holds on to sanity by a thread, as her world is turned upside down.

Ernania is hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital in Mozambique. She dreams about her little son, Hanic, and her husband, Pak, who is a soldier of the war. In the meantime, a quirky musical instrument plays: her own bed. Ernania’s musical virtuosity, attracts the attention of the hospital nurses. One day, her song is played in a radio program and Rosa, an evangelical priest of “Rádio Moçambique”, goes to the hospital to listen to Ernania’s song. Ernania takes the priest’s visit as an opportunity to run away from the hospital.

Mashoto’s life in the city is a hustle. It’s a fast life in the fast city of Dar es Salaam. There’s no time to stop and Mashoto likes it this way. There’s no time to think about the people he left behind in the village. Until silence cuts through the city racket with three words: mother has died. With those words Mashoto’s life changes forever. He returns home, to the place he abandoned, to bury his only ally. Yet his mother has left behind a gift. Her voice, her unseen presence, a gentle whisper urging him to open his eyes and strain his ears- to learn the lessons of nature, of the earth and the roots that draw their nourishment from it. Cast out by his father after losing the little money his mother had left, Mashoto must learn to survive from the land. He must learn to face old enemies and forge new alliances, to fight and to love. Most of all, Mashoto must discover what it is he is fighting for.

Bahasha is the story of Kitasa, an elected public official who betrays his family, friends and community when he takes an easy bribe. He learns the hard way and must now find the road to redemption.