Kitale Film Week 2025 Hoists A Western Kenyan Town

With her diverse cultural exports, Africa remains the place for stories that transcend time and boundaries. These stories, often told by the continent’s filmmakers, are distributed through film festivals and other screening events. One of these festivals is the Kitale Film Week, an annual week-long event that is hosted in the Western Kenyan town of Kitale and showcases diverse Afrocentric films from around the continent and world.

Currently in its third year, the Kitale Film Week began on 2nd February and will end on 9th February, 2025. A key feature of this year’s edition is an array of film screenings that cut across narrative feature films (20), African classics (6), documentary feature films (7) and short films (50). These films are selected from filmmakers in the host country and other African countries such as Ghana, Uganda, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Tanzania and Namibia. 

Kitale Film Week 2025 had an opening night on Sunday 2nd February with two film screenings,  Le Fetishe (Côte d’Ivoire) directed by Kouamé Mathurin and Samuel Codjov, and  Nawi (Kenya) directed by Kevin Schmutzler, Toby Schmutzler, Apuu Mourine Munyes and Vallentine Chelluget at Deepsea Resort, Kitale. On Monday 3rd February, more films were screened across three venues: the Kitale Museum Auditorium, Deepsea Main Hall, and Outdoor Screening Areas.

As the festival enters its third day, the schedule includes a lineup of school and outdoor screenings spotlighting New African fiction and classics, and a tribute to Kenyan film editor Franki Ashiruka who passed away in a car accident in Nigeria last year. Classics such as Bala Bala Sese (Uganda) directed by Lukyamuzi Bashir and Nairobi Half Life (Kenya) directed by David “Tosh” Gitonga will be brought to life on the big screens.

Bala Bala Sese, initially released in 2015 as the debut feature film of the producer-director and based on a screenplay by Usama Mukwaya, follows the story of a boyfriend’s battle for love as he perseveres against abuses and harassment most especially from his love interest’s father. Nairobi Half Life is a 2012 Kenyan drama film that is based on a young, budding actor in uptown Kenya who aspires to become successful in the city. Following its release, the film was selected as Kenya’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (now Best International Feature Film) category at the 85th Academy Awards though it did not make the final shortlist. 

For the remaining days, across different locations in the city, the festival  will welcome other screenings as well as the North Rift and Western Kenya Film and TV Summit scheduled for 9am – 4pm on Wednesday 5th February at Kitale Museum. The closing night of the Kitale Film Week features screenings of short film Grogans Lodge and documentary feature film Our Land, Our Freedom— both Kenyan works steeped in the country’s colonial history and independence struggles.

Grogans Lodge, directed by Isaya Evans, is about two students who travel to an old hunting lodge in search of work as they are plunged into a colonial past. Our Land, Our Freedom, directed by  Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu, explores the lives of  mother and daughter Mukami and Wanjugu Kimathi, two extraordinary women in Kenyan political history. Mukami, a freedom fighter in 1950s Kenya, was married to Dedan Kimathi—leader of the Mau Mau struggles against British rule in colonial Kenya who was killed.  In the documentary, initially released in 2024, Wanjugu takes after her mother as she investigates her father’s remains, encountering Mau Mau veterans, inspiring activists, and families of other deprived individuals in her journey through Kenya.

The full list of selected films for the ongoing Kitale Film Week 2025 is here.