Ugandan filmmakers Nisha Kalema and Ntale Guma Mbaho Mwine are some of the big winners in the just-concluded 15th edition of the Silicon Valley African Film Festival that happened earlier this week in California USA.
Nisha Kalema won Best Narrative Feature for her Makula, beating off competition from Joel Ayuk’s Choke Hold from Cameroon, Yao Ramesar’s Fortune For All from Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria’s Uzodinma Okpechi’s Kamsi, The Midnight Bride by Tanzania’s Clerick Morgen, The Moon is in Aquarius by United State’s Jesse Kuba and Jade Bryan’s What Somalia Wants as well as Nigeria’s This is Lagos by Kenneth Gyang.
Ntale Guma’s Memories of Love Returned beat off competition from Brief Tender Light, Heroic Bodies, Limo on the Run, Othelo O Grande, Pirinha, The New Face of Salone, Ominobu, Three Ordinary Women and Zar in Egypt to win the Best Documentary Feature.
Uganda has over the years consistently made a notable presence at the festival with Nisha Kalema’s “Veronica’s Wish” claiming the Best Feature Film award in 2019, while the previous year saw the screening of “Your Turn” by Kizito Samuel Saviour. Other Ugandan films that have earned recognition include “Superstition” by Aaron Zziwa, “Men in Suits” by Kevin Johns Nabukenya (selected in 2021), “Esteem,” and “Catch Out” by Kizito Samuel Saviour (chosen in 2020 and 2021 respectively), as well as “Crystal” by Amanya Leonard, among many others.
The Silicon Valley African Film Festival promotes an understanding and appreciation of Africa and Africans through moving images. Aptly themed “Africa through the African lens”, the film festival celebrates the vast richness of the African Continent through the lenses of Africa’s seasoned and emerging filmmakers and, crucially, provides audiences with exquisite lenses to the real Africa.
SVAFF, an annual event hosted in the United States, serves as a vibrant celebration of movies from around the world created by Black filmmakers.