Filmmakers can help to address colonial-era injustices in Africa

A woman with a professional video camera and headphone. (Courtesy/iStock)

On the night of April 23, 2025, I joined Innocent Onyango Adenyo, a friend and fellow playwright, at the Goethe Institut, Nairobi, for the screening of the documentary film 'The Empty Grave' (2024), co-directed by Cece Mlay, one of Tanzania's fastest-rising filmmakers. The film is about two communities' quest for the repatriation of their leaders' remains-taken custody of by the colonisers at the height of the Maji Maji Rebellion against the German colonial rule in Tanzania between 1905 and 1907-from German museums.

Set partly in Songea and Meru, in the south and north of the country respectively, the film follows the efforts, frustrations and occasional gains of the Ngoni and Meru People of Tanzania as they push for the return of the remains, including skulls of their chiefs as well as artefacts purloined between 1895 and 1900. Characters, who include a teacher and an advocate of the High Court of Tanzania, at some point travel to Germany where they are treated to the pathos-filled eyeballing of a panoply of the remains. Towards the end of the film, a rare apology from the visiting German president amid a widely held perception of unconcern on the part of the Tanzanian state only begins to promise hope for both the families and communities involved and those watching.