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A Kenyan documentary, The Battle For Laikipia, is set to premiere today at The Sundance Film Festival.
It will be a moment that flies the country’s flag high in the 10-day event that sees the celebration of independent film.
“The Sundance Film Festival is the ultimate gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives,” a description on the event’s website reads in part.
It adds: “Our annual programme includes dramatic and documentary features, short films, and episodic content. We also host daily filmmaker conversations, panel discussions, and other events. Since 1985, hundreds of films launched at the festival have gone on to gain critical acclaim and reach new audiences worldwide.”
According to a press statement released exclusively to The Sunday Standard by LBx Africa, a Nairobi-based production company, the documentary content was filmed for over five years.
“This is a film that explores home and belonging through the lived experiences of Samburu pastoralists, cattle ranchers and conservationists who inhabit one of the most beautiful places in Kenya, Laikipia, which is grappling with the harrowing impact of climate change, which contributes to conflict over diminishing resources.”
The film is directed by Daphne Matziaraki (Greece) and Peter Murimi (Kenya), making it a collaboration between Kenyan and international filmmakers.
The directors said in a joint statement: “We celebrate that ‘The battle for Laikipia’, an international collaboration that includes Kenyan creatives, is at Sundance and we are excited to foster conversations about home and belonging, especially as climate change creates pressure on our lived experiences across the world.”
The film is produced by Toni Kamau of We are not the Machine (Producer for Softie, Sundance 2020), and Executive produced by Roger Ross Williams and Geoff Martz of One Story Up (Netflix’s Stamped from the beginning, Netflix’s High on the Hog).
This will be the second Kenyan-directed and produced documentary to premiere in competition at the World Cinema Documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival.
Director Peter Murimi described the experience of creating the documentary in an interview, noting that during the five to six-year period of filming, Laikipia County was experiencing its worst drought in 10 years.
“We follow Simeon and his family- Simeon is a Samburu man, and the Samburu have been pastoralists for centuries, moving, looking for pasture for their animals,” Murimi said.
“We follow the Dods family, who are fourth-generation Kenyans. Their great-great-grandfather moved from England to South Africa. These two families find themselves at the forefront of the battle for grass, water and land rights. But this conflict happening in this corner of the world is so relevant to so many other places and people in the world right now.”
Director Daphne Matziaraki described the documentary as one that takes place “in the sweeping Savannahs of Laikipia, a Kenyan wildlife haven where indigenous pastoralists and descendants of British settlers live side by side.”
She adds: “The changing climate ignites a conflict over resources and land, which goes much deeper into the notions of home and belonging. The unresolved history and the warming climate raise the stakes in this tense, emotional neo western epic.”
On the Sundance Film Festival website, the film has been described as one crafted with empathy, compassion, and brutal truth.
“Weaving together themes of environmentalism, colonialism, and conservationism, the film delicately showcases the impact of these crucial topics on the indigenous farming community of Kenya’s Laikipia region. Handled with care, Matziaraki and Murimi’s The Battle for Laikipia takes us through a journey that elicits frustration, awe, curiosity, and wonder.”
