Actor Nisha Kalema receives a certificate from UCC boss Nyombi Thembo
The local film industry made significant strides at the beginning of the 2020s. There were two high-budget films that were yet to premiere, Loukman Ali’s The Girl in the Yellow Jumper and Doreen Mirembe’s Kafa Coh. But Covid-19 happened.
Both films were scheduled to premiere in 2020, but with social order disrupted, both premieres were called off indefinitely. The Girl in the Yellow Jumper was acquired by Netflix a year later, becoming the first local film on the platform.
Kafa Coh later premiered in 2022, spending a week at the cinema, becoming one of the few films to do that. But during the pandemic, as many people were home, the idea to have original Ugandan content on premier pay TV service providers became one of the main objectives.
Pearl Magic had been created a few years before, but it was licensing most of its content; with the launch of Pearl Magic Prime, more commissioned shows were introduced.
The production was better, and so was the acting and writing; the rollout gave Ugandans shows such as Mama and Me, The Kojja, and reality shows such as Date My Family and My Wedding, but the big attractions were two telenovela dramas, Sanyu and Prestige.
As Mathew Nabwiso, the director of Sanyu, would later say, when they started making content for M-Net, it was the first time many Ugandan filmmakers were surviving as working filmmakers; it was the first time many of them were paying their bills for making films.