The Forbidden movie poster. COURTESY PHOTO
There is good news coming from the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) where Ugandan filmmaker, Kizito Samuel Saviour, is in a jovial mood after his movie, The Forbidden, earned the accolade for Best East African Feature Film Award at the festival.
“I am so excited that Uganda was well represented at the Zanzibar International Film Festival 2018. Despite the fact that we had a few films in the competition, we at least managed to bring two awards home. Towards the Awards Gala I was a bit worried because The Forbidden was competing amongst some big films I’ve seen doing well all over Africa this year,” explains Kizito.
READ: Ugandan film, The Forbidden wins big in Nigeria
Deep inside he wasn’t expecting the award but stayed strong and hopeful throughout the day as he kept on praying to God and telling his colleagues how they should really bring that award home.
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Luckily, God heard Kizito’s call and bang, he, together with Uganda, scooped The Best East African Feature Film Award. It meant so much to Kizito as a director. The film is his second film to direct after the directorial debut with Bunjako that scooped him an African Movie Academy Awards nomination for Best First Time Director last year.
The Forbidden’s director, Kizito Samuel Saviour. COURTESY PHOTOS
“This win doesn’t only give hope and more inspiration to me to keep working harder and smarter but also to other growing filmmakers in Uganda. I am probably the youngest film director in Uganda to have reached this point of filmmaking victory in a few years, and I am sure this shows other younger filmmakers that we all can still achieve great things regardless of how young we are as long as we don’t give up on aiming for better growth each day,” the promising filmmaker narrates.
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The Forbidden was the only Feature Film from Uganda. Kizito gives great thanks to the producer Claire Nampala, the cast and crew and everyone that helped them in the making of the movie.
The film captures the story of a young girl ‘Dian’, a single mother who is a smart girl at school whose education is interrupted by lack of school payments.
“This stress pushes her to pressure her mother to tell her who her father was but the mother keeps on hiding the truth. After her mother’s death, she gets hired to work as a maid at her boyfriend “Joseph’s” home where his father “Ssendi” rapes her. She is later after caught in a puzzled world when she gets to know that her and her boyfriend Joseph shared the same father who had already infected her with HIV through the sexual harassments,” Kizito lays out part of the movie plot.
Back home, the movie has been nominated in the Gulu International Film Festival – GIFF. The same movie recently earned him recognition in Ghana at the ‘Golden Movie Awards’ where it was nominated.
Kizito Samuel Saviour poses with the ZIFF award. COURTESY PHOTOS
Kizito was one of four Ugandan filmmakers that made it to the list of finalists whose works were exhibited at ZIFF, which was started 21 years ago to develop and uplift the East African film industry, through workshops.
Loukman Ali participated in the short film category with film titled The Bad Mexican, Coutinho Kemiyondo in the same category for a film titled Kyenvu and Edmond Tamale for his documentary work titled Your Music Your Voice.
