UNICEF describes child marriage as a violation of human rights. It hampers the development of the girl child, often leading to early pregnancy and social isolation, limiting career opportunities and exposing victims to increased risk of domestic violence. A UNICEF report reveals that Kenya is home to over four million child brides, with one in every four young women married in childhood. NAWI: Dear Future Me, a Kenyan-German co-production, explores this sensitive issue of child marriage and marginalisation in Turkana County, modern Kenya. Following its 2024 release, the film was selected as Kenya’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards (2025 Oscars). It was screened at the 14th edition of the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF 2025) where the lead child actress Michelle Lemuya Ikeny won the Best Female Performance award.
Set in the remote Turkana region of Kenya, NAWI follows a girl’s struggle against forced marriage and her thwarted educational aspirations. Despite emerging as the best graduating student in her primary school, 13-year-old Nawi has to abandon her dreams and get married to an older stranger in exchange for livestock. The determination to evade her father’s will and an abusive culture of child marriage leaves a lasting impression as the film ends.
NAWI boasts a strong production team led by four directors: German filmmakers and brothers Toby and Kevin Schmutzler, alongside Kenyan filmmakers Apuu Mourine and Vallentine Chelluget. The concept for the film grew out of the initiatives of Learning Lions, a German non-profit organization dedicated to empowering young adults in marginalized East African communities by equipping them with digital skills and opportunities.
Learning Lions was launched in 2015 in Turkana County, Northern Kenya, where there are limited traditional socioeconomic and infrastructural opportunities. Since its existence, it has clamoured for girl child education, combatting early child marriage, and spearheaded digital development in the Turkana region, creating an ICT model campus around Lake Turkana in 2020.
Just two years after its launch, the NGO had approached the Schmutzler brothers for a collaboration that would see them organize filmmaking workshops particularly for students and other young people ranging from sixteen to thirty in the region. The workshops prioritized women, with only a few men. For other digital skill programmes, they also recruited volunteers from all over the world to share knowledge and build a vibrant community grounded in both local and global realities.
“They spoke of the beautiful, untouched landscape and the fact that no feature-length international production had ever been shot in the area,” Kevin recalls. “There were so many untold stories, and we decided to collaborate. My crew and I worked together to identify meaningful stories with the potential to inspire real change.”
Learning Lions, partnering with the Schmutzlers, put out a writing competition across East Africa. Among the numerous entries they received, one submission stood out: a poignant short story written by a woman from central Kenya, sourced from real life experiences of her family and close community. That was the foundation of NAWI.
For Milcah Cherotich, the scriptwriter, the fight against child marriage is a perennial pledge, having witnessed children being stripped of their innocence and given out in marriage, their life journeys altered by ignorant, selfish family members. A good chunk of her life has been dedicated to campaigning against child marriage and offering support to victims. The writing competition, which had an international jury composed of producers of different nationalities, gave her the opportunity to fully express a story she had harboured in her heart for years. “We had an international jury, American, German, Kenyan, and French producers, and everyone was captivated by the story,” Kevin recalls.
“It has been eight years of workshops, storytelling, and short film projects,” Kevin reminisces further on the relationship with the NGO. “COVID disrupted many of these activities, but toward the end of 2021, we resumed with the writing contest.”
By 2022, Milcah’s story had morphed into a full-fledged script for NAWI. Toby and Kevin had spent nearly two months in Turkana working with Milcah to expand the short story into the script for a feature-length film. A writer’s room with willing participants was created to that effect.
The casting team went to about fifteen or sixteen schools across Turkana County scouting for talents, particularly child actors. Hundreds of boys and girls showed interest. In the process, they discovered Michelle who plays Nawi, Sienna Tanayian who plays Hope, and Joel Liwan who is also Joel the brother and an ally of Nawi in the film. Since the children were first-time actors, the casting team decided to include experienced adult actors that would star alongside them as teachers and parents. This was enough to support the young actors for their scenes.
Vallentine Chelluget worked closely with the child actors on set, with she and Toby handling most of the intense rehearsals. Kevin adds that there was another acting coach from Nairobi who unfortunately passed away last year. Their concerted efforts helped to prepare Michelle physically and emotionally for her role. Then, there was Apuu Mourine, who, being a product of Turkana and an experienced music video connoisseur, brought invaluable cultural contributions to the team.
“With my brother and me, we needed two women directors to balance the collaboration,” Kevin says in response to a question on the dynamic and specific responsibilities assigned to the quadruple directorial team. “By the time we began shooting, much of the discussion and planning had already been done. Each scene had been outlined and agreed upon, which made the process smooth. We only had two moments of creative disagreement, one with Apuu, but she stood her ground, and in hindsight she was completely right. Apuu took the lead in the highly cultural scenes, for instance the wedding sequence.”
As expected, filming in a remote and relatively underdeveloped region posed challenges, mostly infrastructural deficiency. The community had poor road networks, with no electricity and running water, which meant that the production team made arrangements to fill the gaps and cater to the wellbeing of cast and crew on set. The team had to create the main homestead in the film from scratch since they could not rent any home for the three-week shoot without having to displace the real family that lived there.
One of the major parts of NAWI involves a spring flood. In a tense scene where the flood suddenly arrives, Nawi struggles to wade through the rising waters, and for a moment, she is feared dead as she tries to make it across before it is too late. Kevin explains that the spring flood was real, coinciding with the time of filming. Only the wide shot showing the start of the rain was VFX.
At first, in the writer’s room, the team had imagined how they might fake the flood in a shallow part of the river. But on arrival at the location, a massive 200-metre-wide river had formed, which cut through the mountains and offered the visuals they could work with. Kevin appears confident about the spring flood scene being Michelle’s most exciting day in the entire period of filming.
The entire production trajectory of NAWI has exposed Kevin to the abundance of talented storytellers in remote communities like Turkana who simply need access to training, equipment and opportunities. He says that Apuu is doing remarkable work, Michelle is already shooting more films, and members of their camera team have proceeded to high school and university in Nairobi. So far, the collaboration showed a glimpse of what the women were capable of, especially their creativity and innovation when given the needed support.
Turkana remains the first impact site of NAWI, with the success of the production leading to the construction of a girls-only boarding school for survivors of child marriage. The film continues to champion important conversations on human rights and child marriage locally and internationally. Its globetrotting includes a two-time screening at the United Nations this year, where it brought to many viewers for the first time a child’s perspective on its sensitive subject matter.
“This collaboration has taught me so much about perspective, identity, and storytelling,” Kevin says, reflecting on how NAWI impacted him as a filmmaker. “ There were so many layers to working as a team of directors, you know our unique identities as male and female, on the one hand, and white and black on the other hand. I am super grateful that I get to experience it.”
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