NBO Film Festival The Reviews

The Who WhatWhere Writers desk passed by to watch some films at the Nairobi Film Festival which took lace in three different locations with various movies screening over a period of ten days. Here are sone reviews fro what they watched

One Woman, One Bra reviewed by Victoria Kagichu

One Woman, One Bra is Victor Nchogu’s debut feature, following Star, a woman in the Maasai community who is on the precipice of losing her home and the land it sits on because she lacks kinship ties. She fights for her right to belong by searching for her parentage, beginning with an attempt to trace a photographer who took her picture as a child. She also tries to gain favour in the community by collaborating with a ludicrously exploitative NGO in exchange for funding, going as far as seeking her friend’s hand in marriage.

The film explores community, identity, culture, and tradition. It poses the question of what it means to belong to a collective while lacking the ties that directly connect an individual to the rest of the clan. Nchogu highlights the predicament of a woman who has no seat at the table, always forced to establish some sort of attachment to a man, whether as a daughter or a wife. We see this play out through what appear to be the character’s two major choices: finding her roots or marrying her friend.

One Woman, One Bra is a beautifully shot debut, peppered with stunning landscape shots and a vibrant colour palette. It is filled with nods to both Maasai and Kenyan culture, from salon posters and traditional markings to Maasai folk songs, mabati cups, metal kettles, and cloth draped over furniture.

While making room for comedy, the film is ultimately a stern commentary on patriarchy, the white saviour complex, our connection to the land, identity, and community.

The Woman Who Poked the Leopard reviewed by Victoria Kagichu

The Woman Who Poked the Leopard follows Dr Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan activist, poet, and academic in anthropology known for her sharp tongue, quick wit, and acts of resistance.

The film opens with Nyanzi and her three children, two sons and a daughter, reading the incendiary poem that led to her imprisonment for 15 months under President Yoweri Museveni’s regime. The documentary then offers a riveting account of Nyanzi’s life, focusing largely on 2021, when she campaigned for political office in an effort to unseat the president. It also documents the torture and humiliation she endured while imprisoned, as well as her eventual exile to Germany. The result is a portrait of her unbreakable spirit, her humour in the face of adversity, and her intimate interactions with her children, friends, and community. The documentary becomes an immersive study of her defiance against sexism, corruption, injustice, and anti-queer violence.

Director Patience Nitumwesiga crafts a rigorous portrait of a woman who demonstrates how language can be used as both a weapon and a vehicle for change, and how freedom is a fundamental right. The film makes for a compelling watch, portraying a woman whose unrelenting strength inspires audiences to fight for justice, stand with the underdogs, and defend their dignity.

Black Zombie reviewed by Hafare Segelan

Black Zombie is an engrossing dive into the zombie trope, Haitian Vodou, and Hollywood’s use of zombies to foster anti-Blackness. The documentary traces the history of the zombie from Haiti’s sugarcane fields, where enslaved people endured conditions that reduced them to lives resembling a form of living death. It then examines how Hollywood transformed Haiti’s zombies into supernatural figures, stoking fear of people and cultures that white America perceived as different. Its exploration of Vodou, zombies, Hollywood, and representation makes this documentary a must-watch.

If I Were Alive reviewed by Hafare Segelan
If I Were Alive explores the idea of death as something belonging to another world. In the first part of the film, we see one of the most sincere portrayals of enduring love between the elderly, showing how love and affection are expressed through small acts, such as peeling an orange. The latter half then reaches for the stars, taking the viewer on a fantastical journey through the intricacies of life and death.

Big Sad Nairobi reviewed by Keith Mukiri

Big Sad Nairobi is a stop-motion film featuring an anthropomorphic goat, telling the story of the daily struggles of an ordinary Kenyan on an ordinary day.

Stop-motion is such a wonderful style of filmmaking. I love the intricacies of technical filmmaking, and there is something pure about witnessing a piece of art that was painstaking to make. Stop-motion embodies this. The film focuses on mental health and the burden of forgiveness, making for a tender and unexpected start to the showcase.

Watching it in Nairobi made the story hit closer to home. The film does not treat the city as a skyline or a postcard. Instead, it understands how living there can exhaust people in small doses.

Prayer reviewed by Keith Mukiri
Prayer takes us from Nairobi to a Lisbon techno club, where Abdul, an immigrant worker on his first shift, is on a video call with his wife as she goes into labour. Meanwhile, his new boss desperately calls for his help. Caught between the demands of work and the birth of his son, Abdul fights for his right to recite the Adhan for his newborn.

I was gripped by how much was asked of one man in a single night. The film explores the intersection of tradition, fatherhood, and the struggles of undocumented immigrant labour. Based on the autobiographical story of its screenwriter, Deo Mahameru, it offers a moving account of a man caught between competing obligations.

Window Shot reviewed by Keith Mukiri

Iranian director Husein Jalilvand explores who gets to control the narrative amidst the brutal realities of imperialism. Set against the backdrop of colonial Kenya in the 1950s, the film uses archival footage to examine how a lifelong struggle for independence was framed as a terrorist movement. The title, Window Shot, is a marvellous metaphor for perspective: issues can look starkly different depending on which side of the window you view them from.

The film is raw and unfiltered, unafraid to reveal the deep frustration of the Mau Mau fighters as their oppressors wrote the history books. Jalilvand has described the project as one that stands the test of time, and I agree. The narrator delivers a compelling performance, moving through history with unfiltered criticism. Laura Isse’s emotionless tone is particularly effective, allowing silences to linger long enough for the questions raised by the film to settle firmly by its end.

It is a film whose relevance may only grow as society continues to grapple with the ways history is recorded, interpreted, and manipulated.

AAHI reviewed by Keith Mukiri
AAHI was one of the films that truly stood out to me in the showcase. Nana Kofi establishes herself as a bold voice in African cinema, unafraid to tell stories without fear or restraint. The film follows Araba as she navigates the contradictions of marriage, while both she and her husband engage in affairs.

The title, which means “taboo” in Ghanaian, is fitting. The film is erotic and seductive, using sensuality to explore religion, liberation, and suppression. It was my personal favourite in the showcase. The writing is immaculate and assured, allowing the plot to unfold at its own pace while revealing just enough to keep the viewer engaged.

Araba, played by Gina Castel, delivers beautiful, magnetic soliloquies about the electricity of her affair, while expressing sharp, visceral frustration with her husband, who is pursuing an affair of his own.

The cinematography is intimate and passionate. It does not shy away from the sensual; it relishes it. Castel delivers a magnetic performance, and I was in awe by the end. AAHI is a wonderful exploration of desire, indulgence, and the cathartic release that comes with breaking free from self-suppression.

The Invitation Reviewed by Keith Mukiri

I do not think any film in the showcase stood out sonically more than The Invitation, directed by Rafeeqah Galant and Thandi Sebe. The 2025 South African film follows Zola, an unsuccessful painter who finally lands her first solo exhibition a day after her 33rd birthday. What should be a celebratory occasion unravels into a maddening downward spiral as those close to her ignore her invitations, choosing instead to pursue their own personal milestones.

The Invitation is hilariously anxious and absurd, blending humorous, witty writing with a soundscape that draws the viewer into Zola’s state of anxiety and self-loathing. The sound design does a magnificent job of filling the spaces between the visuals in a film that uses dialogue sparingly. Percussive and reminiscent of bouncy jazz, it repeatedly uses chimes, bells, and drums to match the hyperactivity quietly building within Zola’s home.

The set design is deceptively charming, with the house adorned with Zola’s artwork. Within this setting, Galant and Sebe’s direction captures the feeling of Zola’s internal claustrophobia. I found this contradiction utterly delightful.

With each ignored invitation, Zola’s mental state deteriorates, ultimately leading to an increasingly absurd release. You cannot take your eyes off Liza Sholtz, whose eccentric performance as Zola is a testament to her skill.

The Misunderstanding reviewed by Keith Mukiri

Sintofahamu (The Misunderstanding) follows two estranged friends on a journey to spread the ashes of a mutual friend. The story explores the different faces of grief, with the protagonists’ contrasting approaches to mourning becoming the central source of conflict. Ultimately, the film portrays grief as a journey with many paths, shaped by the different ways people navigate loss..

The story is quiet and restrained, allowing the viewer to sit with the painful silence that accompanies the loss of a loved one. Unlike other films in the showcase, it does not rely on striking stylistic or technical devices to capture attention. It is solemn and silent. That is the point.

Its most striking visual feature is its use of colour, particularly green and blue, which symbolise the veils between reality and grief, respectively. The Misunderstanding explores loss in a way that hits close to home. For me, that is the Kenyan film’s greatest success.

The Break In reviewed by Keith Mukiri
While Sintofahamu (The Misunderstanding) uses silence to tell a tragic story, Sizwe Kubeka’s The Break In draws the viewer in with charming humour and hilarious dialogue before delivering its final blow.

The film follows two groups of burglars who happen to be robbing the same house while pursuing two different sets of valuables. Their choices reveal the differing value systems held by the thieves, holding up a mirror to the audience and asking whether ambition supersedes necessity. Is greed antithetical to survival, or does it stem from it?

I love how the film quietly raises the stakes as these questions take shape. The Break In reminded me of the Bong Joon Ho masterpiece Parasite in its approach to social commentary. While the two films have distinct plots, both use the divide between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to tell a story that has long existed within society.

The Fortunate revied by Keith Mukiri

The Fortunate centers on an alcoholic pastor preaching against alcoholism. It is a striking film that excels in its set design and visual storytelling, with scenes shifting between theatre-like sets and the open air of an Ethiopian community town.

The plot is masterfully deceptive, drawing on a style of African storytelling that merges fiction with reality especially through imagery and metaphor in its final act. The result is a film that explores the contradictions between religious conviction and personal struggle.

At the end of the screening, the film’s executive producer highlighted how filmmakers’ sources of inspiration shift with each season. Faith and religious themes had surfaced in other films in the showcase, and The Fortunate continued that thread.

In his accompanying letter, Habtamu, the director of the film, explains that he wanted to encourage discussion of sensitive subjects in Ethiopia, where addiction and contradictions within religious life remain difficult to discuss openly. The film gives these subjects space, using the pastor’s struggle to examine the distance between public morality and private experience.