Judy Kibinge Returns with “Goat”: A Supernatural Reckoning

After more than a decade away from the director’s chair, pioneering Kenyan filmmaker Judy Kibinge makes her long-awaited return with Goat, a taut 27-minute supernatural thriller that explores the inescapable nature of karmic debt. Her last directorial effort, Something Necessary (2013), earned its place in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the Toronto International Film Festival, establishing her voice as one of East African cinema’s most distinctive.

But Kibinge’s influence on the cinematic landscape extends far beyond her own filmography. Widely recognized as an architect of Kenya’s contemporary film renaissance, she founded Docubox in 2013, the East African film fund that has since nurtured over 100 films across the region. The fund’s impact speaks for itself: in 2020, Softie, a Docubox-supported documentary, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Mention for editing before becoming one of the highest-grossing films in Kenyan theatrical history that year.

Now, with Goat, Kibinge returns to her craft with the accumulated wisdom of a filmmaker who has spent years cultivating the next generation while refining her own artistic vision.

The film draws from East African spiritual traditions and folklore, grounding its supernatural elements in specific cultural contexts rather than relying on generic horror tropes. This cultural specificity gives Goat a distinctive texture and authenticity that sets it apart from Western supernatural thrillers. With her background spanning both documentary and narrative cinema, Kibinge employs a visual language that lets images speak as loudly as dialogue, trusting the audience to read between the frames. The cinematography becomes a character in itself, revealing truths that words cannot capture and suggesting presences that hover just beyond the visible world. This approach demands active engagement from viewers, rewarding those willing to sit with ambiguity and unspoken meaning.

Goat promises to be more than just a return to form for Kibinge. It represents the artistic evolution of a filmmaker who has matured both behind and away from the camera, bringing a fresh perspective to East African genre cinema.