From cattle rustling to running: the reel story

Volumes have been written and endless hours of reels shot on Kenya’s exploits on the athletics field. There is that typical narrative; running to school, a welcome escape from poverty, high altitude, diets and their larger-than-usual lung capacities- all trying to explain Kenya’s dominance in the middle and long-distance races.

However, it seems the narrative cannot be told with finality as the recently launched movie, Gun Runners’, demonstrated.

What else would you make of two warriors in their mid-20s who trade their guns, in search of a dream of becoming professional runners?

Shot 10 years ago in the vast Rift Valley, ‘the accidental film’ by Canada-born Nairobi dweller Anjali Nayar captivatingly tells the story of Julius Arile and Robert Matanda, two Kenyan cattle raiders driven out of their home by the need for money and seething family pressures.

Nayar, a trained journalist and award winning filmmaker, travelled to Kapenguria to cover some of the initial races organised by Peace crusader Tegla Loroupe that brought together warring communities in the region. It is then that a simple radio story developed into a gripping film.

“I never really knew we were making a film at the beginning, I didn’t have a camera. After some time, it was more of “we are friends let’s make a movie”.

That explains the level of intimacy you get with the characters, which is really hard from two men especially from that region. They open up about things that are hard in their lives,” Nayar says, explaining how the idea of the film started.

She directed and scripted the production that was released on May 2, 2016 at the 2016 Hot Docs Film Festival.

The two main characters, Arile and Matanda, traded their guns for running, a provoking plot. But as the director portrayed through the 90 minutes, the story actually began when they realised they could run.

“It’s the Kenyan dream. Because physically, they realised they can run but that wasn’t the biggest obstacle. The biggest obstacle was inside.

Because they were these warriors who could not trust people, used to roaming around and doing whatever they wanted,” the 35-year-old director adds, elaborating on the plot that shaped the movie made in Kenya but produced and funded by the National Film Board of Canada.

“There are only about three races in the whole film. It is really about everything that is going on inside, the pressures, the different things that make it difficult to follow.