A still from Soul Boy (2010), shot on the railway line through Kibera. Photo: One Fine Day Films / Ginger Ink
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Soul Boy: the film shot in Kibera in 13 days that won in Rotterdam and Berlin.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects' own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Soul Boy (2010) is a 60-minute Swahili drama directed by Hawa Essuman and written by Billy Kahora. It was produced by German director Tom Tykwer and Marie Steinmann's One Fine Day Films with Ginger Ink in Kenya and the charity Anno's Africa. It grew out of a training workshop, first held in October 2008, in which Kenyan trainees shadowed professional crew. It was shot in 13 days, 12 of them in Kibera.
A cast from Kibera
The lead, Samson Odhiambo, who plays Abila, was cast from Kibera, where he lived. Lucy Gachanja, who plays his mother, and the extras were Kibera residents too. "It has changed us all somehow," Essuman said of the shoot.
The prizes
The film premiered in Gothenburg in January 2010, won the Dioraphte Audience Award at the Rotterdam film festival, screened in the Berlinale's Generation Kplus section, and opened in Kenya on 4 March 2010. At the 2010 Kalasha Awards it won Best Short Film, Best Lead Actor for Odhiambo and Best Screenplay for Kahora. Odhiambo also won Best Actor at the Kenya International Film Festival. At the 2011 Africa Movie Academy Awards it won Best Editing and was nominated in several other categories, including Most Promising Actor for Odhiambo and Leila Dayan Opou. Variety called the performances "energetic and sincere."
The workshop model went on to produce Nairobi Half Life (2012) and Veve (2014). KNN could not find published reports on the later careers of the Kibera cast members.
Sources: kinofenster.de, 2010; Variety, 8 Feb 2010; IFFR 2010; Cinema Without Borders, 3 Nov 2010; AllAfrica, 15 Mar 2011; Wikipedia, Soul Boy.
That was a Kibra News Network report, read by an A I voice.
Kibera Creatives is a KNN series on the artists, designers and performers who built their names from Kibera. Profiles are compiled from published reports and the subjects’ own public pages; sources are listed at the end. Spotted an error? Write to news@kibranewsnetwork.co.ke.
Soul Boy (2010) is a 60-minute Swahili drama directed by Hawa Essuman and written by Billy Kahora. It was produced by German director Tom Tykwer and Marie Steinmann’s One Fine Day Films with Ginger Ink in Kenya and the charity Anno’s Africa. It grew out of a training workshop, first held in October 2008, in which Kenyan trainees shadowed professional crew. It was shot in 13 days, 12 of them in Kibera.
A cast from Kibera
The lead, Samson Odhiambo, who plays Abila, was cast from Kibera, where he lived. Lucy Gachanja, who plays his mother, and the extras were Kibera residents too. “It has changed us all somehow,” Essuman said of the shoot.
The prizes
The film premiered in Gothenburg in January 2010, won the Dioraphte Audience Award at the Rotterdam film festival, screened in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus section, and opened in Kenya on 4 March 2010. At the 2010 Kalasha Awards it won Best Short Film, Best Lead Actor for Odhiambo and Best Screenplay for Kahora. Odhiambo also won Best Actor at the Kenya International Film Festival. At the 2011 Africa Movie Academy Awards it won Best Editing and was nominated in several other categories, including Most Promising Actor for Odhiambo and Leila Dayan Opou. Variety called the performances “energetic and sincere.”
The workshop model went on to produce Nairobi Half Life (2012) and Veve (2014). KNN could not find published reports on the later careers of the Kibera cast members.
KNN Newsroom is the staff byline for stories written, rewritten and edited at the Kibra News Network desk. Where a story credits an outside outlet, the original source is linked at the foot of the piece.
