Kenya-Nigeria Co-Production “One Woman One Bra” Returns Home After Venice Premiere

The Kenya-Nigeria co-production One Woman One Bra is finally returning to Kenya in September, nearly a year after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and a subsequent run through major international festivals. What makes its Kenyan premiere particularly interesting is where that homecoming begins. According to a Sinema Focus exclusive interview with writer and director Vincho Nchogu, the film will first screen in Nkosesia village in Loita on 7 September, the community where it was made, before its Nairobi premiere on 10 September.

That choice gives the film’s return a significance beyond a conventional theatrical rollout. After spending a year being received by audiences and juries abroad, One Woman One Bra will first be seen by the people and community that helped shape its story and production. The film, directed by Vincho Nchogu in her feature debut, centres on Star, a woman whose struggle to secure her home amid changing land laws becomes a larger search for identity, belonging and her place within her community. Made in Loita and rooted in Maasai life, the decision to bring it back to the village before taking it to Nairobi creates an interesting loop between the film’s origins and its international journey.

The choice of Loita was itself deliberate. The filmmakers initially considered shooting in a different Kenyan landscape before settling on the greener, more traditional environment of Loita, which better suited the emotional and cultural world of the story. The village is therefore more than a backdrop for One Woman One Bra. Its landscapes, music, community life and cultural context are integral to the film’s identity, making its eventual return to the place where it was shot feel particularly significant.

Nchogu has also spoken about wanting the film to challenge the expectations placed on women, particularly the idea that a woman’s identity must be validated through marriage, motherhood or other traditional markers of belonging. At its centre, One Woman One Bra is interested in what happens when a woman exists outside those prescribed roles and has to negotiate with a community that does not quite know what to do with her. Star’s fight for land consequently becomes about more than property. It is also a question of identity, agency and who gets to determine a woman’s place within her own community. 

That perspective was also shaped by the realities of making the film in Loita. Nchogu has described a production marked by practical difficulties, including language barriers and severe weather, but also by the resilience and generosity of the women she encountered while filming. The filmmakers worked with local women and incorporated their questions, perspectives and suggestions into the storytelling, helping shape a film that aims to represent the community with greater authenticity. This makes the decision to return the film to Nkosesia particularly fitting. The people who helped inform its portrayal will be among the first to encounter the finished version of the world they helped bring to screen.

There is also something revealing about which audience gets to see the film first. Its festival run has already brought international recognition, including the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature at the BFI London Film Festival, an Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, as well as further recognition in Tarifa and Seoul. But its first Kenyan audience will be the community represented on screen.

One Woman One Bra has also had an unusually international journey from the beginning. Developed through the Venice Biennale College Cinema, the film was made within a demanding production framework and under significant financial and practical constraints. Its journey from a tightly resourced project rooted in a rural Kenyan community to a Venice premiere and then an international festival run makes its subsequent reception particularly striking. The film has since travelled across Europe, North America and Asia, accumulating recognition along the way, before now returning to the place where much of its story and production took shape.

That journey also speaks to the Kenya-Nigeria nature of the project. While the story remains deeply rooted in a Kenyan community, its production reflects a wider African collaboration, with Nchogu directing and Nigerian filmmaker Josh Olaoluwa producing. The film therefore moves across borders even as its narrative remains intensely local. The film’s return to Loita after a year of international acclaim offers a chance to examine what happens when an African film travels the world, collects awards and builds an audience abroad, then comes home first to the community that gave it its setting, characters and story. For a film so concerned with identity, belonging and who has the right to claim a place, its own journey back home feels almost like an extension of those themes.