After a life of radical activism that lands her in jail, Ugandan Queer rights academic and poet Stella Nyanzi runs for parliament. Police brutality and tragedies that follow force her to choose between her children’s safety and the revolution.
SYNOPSIS
The film opens with home footage of Dr. Stella Nyanzi and her children pouring sherry in a crowded apartment in exile. They read the poem that landed Stella in jail. It narrates Museveni’s four-decade reign over Uganda against archival footage. Behind bars, Stella loses an unborn child to torture. When discharged from prison wearing a “fuck oppression” sash, she briefs the press.
Stella undertakes a parliamentary campaign through slums, markets, and trading centers. She connects with Kampala’s working class. People are torn between their faith in her and their religious scorn for her queer allyship. Police besiege her home and she resists them with profanities and her walking cane. Her children accuse her of being unavailable, but Stella does not falter. She wants understanding from those she loves. Her community asks why she doesn’t join Bobi Wine’s party for a sure victory.
Stella loses elections. Her children unhappy, her lover estranged, she remains traumatized. Stella’s parents’ deaths have not been avenged. She turns to family life, but the state still torments her. Resisting another arrest, she burns her parents’ secrets and flees. She leaves her lover behind. In exile, Stella’s activism burgeons. Her children evolve. Stella persists.
Director Statement
I made this film because our current world needs to hear voices like Stella’s without an adulterated white or male gaze. As an African woman who faces the kind of oppression that she faces every day, I understand her rage and I want to document it because I have the same rage inside me. As a mother, I believe that Stella is who she is because she has the kind of love only a mother knows. A love that comes from loving another human more than you love yourself. And watching the world treat that human like a second class citizen. But Stella is not sitting on the sidelines like many of us and wishing for a better tomorrow. She has thrown her body, family, love and career right in the storm of our increasingly growing fascist world and has chosen a life where she pokes the leopard every day with her poetry, her provocative activism and her lifestyle. I don’t know a single person who is as true to their beliefs as she is. Stella will lose an election she wants to win so bad because she does not want to bend her public persona to a homophobic constituency. It is rare to find a person so bold, so selfless and so loving. Part of the reason for making this film is to live vicariously through her courage, but also to document her for our children, for our country and for the world.
Supporter Statement
"What an incredibly compelling character! Such great access. The footage you have is really strong."
-Judy Kibinge, Docubox CEO.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Patience Nitumwesiga
Patience Nitumwesiga is a devoted feminist afrofuturist filmmaker, theatre-maker, educator, and artist. She’s an alumna of Maisha Film Lab and Durban Talents. She is currently in post-production with her debut feature documentary The Woman Who Poked The Leopard and releasing her latest fiction short supported by DW and East African Screen Collective. She is committed to films that re-humanise women and black people as well as the working class of the world. Nitumwesiga's company Shagika is supporting more directors and writers with similar interests — across genres but always with the values and intentionality of afrofuturism. She also hosts Mbaganire podcast, dedicated to African folktales. Her award-winning works featured by distributors, exhibitions, and festivals across dozens of countries explore decolonized perspectives on power, death, gender, loss, memory, and hope.
Producer Rosie Motene
Rosie Motene is a queer Pan-African feminist writer, activist, speaker, and media proprietor who has worked three decades in TV and film. She was trained as a producer through MNET and NFVF. A multi-award-winning author and producer, she advocates on issues related to GBV and LGBTQI in Africa. Her TV producer credits include over 30 shows produced in South Africa and Uganda, for NTV and Spark TV. Credits range from Hotel Rwanda to Wild at Heart to Man on Ground. Her three passions in life are womxn, Africa, and the arts.
RELATED LINKS
PROMOTE THIS PROJECT
Put a donation widget on your site. Click here for code.
ABOUT YOUR DONATION
Women Make Movies (WMM), Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State and accepts charitable donations on behalf of this project. Your donation will be spent by the filmmaker(s) toward the production and completion of this media project. No services or goods are provided by Women Make Movies, the filmmaker(s) or anyone else associated with this project in exchange for your charitable donation.
Your contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law, and a confirmation of your donation will be sent via email. WMM will send you an acknowledgement letter in the mail to the address listed for tax purposes.