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The Battle For Laikipia Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

The Battle for Laikipia , BBC iPlayer streaming now

As this year’s Sheffield DocFest draws closer, treat yourself to one of the best of the films that screened there last year. Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi’s thoughtful and thorough documentary considers the complex situation at play in Kenya’s Rift Valley region, where frictions over land are growing between the indigenous semi-nomadic pastoralists and white land-owning descendants of the colonial era. The documentarians step inside both communities and follow the developments over several years, while also offering plenty of historical context. A thoughtful film that advocates for dialogue over conflict. “It was basically like walking on a tightrope, you get the right balance,” Murimi told us when he and Matziaraki talked to us about the challenges of the film.

Batman, 11.10pm , Talking Pictures TV (Freeview Channel 81), Monday, June 9

Long before...

French filmmaker Jonathan Millet’s thriller Ghost Trail won El Gouna Film Festival’s $50,000 Golden Star award for best narrative film. The festival ran October 24-November 1.

Lead Adam Bessa also won best actor for his performance as a young man on a mission to track Syrian regime leaders in France, where he must confront his former torturer. The film world premiered at Cannes’ Critics’ Week sidebar.

The $25,000 Silver Star award went to Julien Colonna’s war drama The Kingdom, while Indian romantic drama Girls Will be Girls by Shuchi Talati won the $15,000 Bronze Star and the Fipresci award.

The latter...

Gints Zilbalodis’ animated feature Flow, Latvia’s submission for the Oscars, won the €2,000 Golden Athena award for best film at the Athens International Film Festival (October 2-14).

The film, which also collected the audience award, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section earlier this year and has since won prizes at Annecy, Melbourne, and Guadalajara, and has been shortlisted for the upcoming European film awards.

It centres on a cat who teams up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog after a flood destroys his home. Local theatrical distributor and platform Cinobo picked up Greek rights.

The...

From dodging bullets to sleeping on goat skins, film-makers Peter Murimi and Daphne Matziaraki faced unique challenges when documenting the conflict between white farmers and Indigenous herders

The Laikipia plateau in Kenya is a wildlife conservation haven, and a popular safari destination featuring all the big five animals of Africa. As yet, a simmering local conflict between the Indigenous pastoralist communities and long-established white farmers has remained largely unnoticed by the international community. But The Battle for Laikipia, shot by two seasoned film-makers – award-winning Kenyan documentary-maker Peter Murimi and Daphne Matziaraki, a Greek director with a short film Oscar nomination – walks a tightrope to show the delicate balance in a conflict that has become increasingly violent in recent years due to the climate crisis.

“While making the film, we were surprised by the fact that the people who share that same landscape barely knew each other and did not truly understand one another,...

Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi take time to assess and follow the situation in Laikipia County in Kenya’s Rift Valley region as frictions over land rise between the indigenous semi-nomadic pastoralists and white land-owning descendants of the colonial era. The documentarians invested several years in the project and it pays off in this impressively balanced assessment of a conflict over land that has been exacerbated by climate change and drought.

The pair gain intimate access to both communities as tensions mount after 2017, not only following events as they unfold but setting them within historical context with judicious use of archive footage. On the one hand are ranchers and wildlife conservancy owners like Maria, who is the third generation of her family to live on the ranch, with her children, including son George, marking the fourth. On the other, are Samburu herders like Simeon, whose universe revolves around their cow herds.

Peter Murimi on filming the semi-nomadic pastoralists: 'It takes patience but also understanding this is the way of life' With The Battle For Laikipia, documentarians Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi carefully navigate the frictions between the indigenous, semi-nomadic pastoralists, who use the area of Kenya for grazing, and white owners of ranches and wildlife conservancies. The latter are a product of the colonial era, which brings its own tensions that have been exacerbated by climate change and drought. The Greek director and her Kenyan counterpart followed the story for several years from 2017, observing the conflict in the present while setting it within the context of the past. The film, which premiered at Sundance, will be released in UK cinemas by metfilm this Friday and we caught up with them to chat about the difficulties and importance of maintaining balance and shooting on the hoof and the advantages of working together.

Illuminating documentary examines the tensions between indigenous pastoralists and commercial ranchers as resources become more scarce during a drought

At the turn of the 20th century, Laikipia in Kenya saw an influx of British settlers who were allowed to claim ownership of uninhabited and uncultivated territory. Much of the local population were stripped of their own land and forced to work as hired hands; many were killed. While more than 60 years have passed since the end of British rule, the stark racial inequality in Kenya remains. Shot during a period of severe drought, which heightens the tension between indigenous pastoralists and commercial ranchers, Peter Murimi and Daphne Matziaraki’s illuminating documentary illustrates the symbiotic relationship between land rights and climate justice.

As the lack of rainfall wreaks havoc on plant life, the film focuses on the Samburu people – a nomadic tribe – and their struggle to find grazing pasture for their cattle.

Canada’s Hot Docs documentary festival has wrapped its 31st edition in Toronto (May 5) and named Yintah the winner of its Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary.

The award, whose winner is determined by an audience poll, comes with a cash prize of Cad 50,000.

Directed by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano, Yintah is about the efforts of the Canadian First Nation Wet’suwet’en people to resist the construction of pipelines across their territory.

On Friday evening (May 3) Hot Docs announced the prize winners from its official competition line-up (full list below).

The festival’s Best Canadian Feature Documentary Award,...

Nishta Jain’s “Farming the Revolution” has won Hot Docs’ Best International Feature Documentary Award, it was announced Friday at the festival’s awards ceremony, held in Toronto at the Centre for Social Innovation–Annex.

Produced by Jain (Raintree Films) and Valérie Montmartin (Little Big Story) and co-directed by cinematographer Akash Basumatari, the film follows the massive year-long gathering of Indian farmers protesting unjust new farm laws that they felt would impact their markets.

The jury said, “‘Farming the Revolution’ spotlights the power of ordinary people with an enduring cinematic sophistication and an indomitable lyrical presence.” The award comes with a Cnd. $10,000 cash prize.

The film, a co-production between India and Norway, now automatically qualifies for consideration in the Academy’s Best Documentary Feature category without the standard theatrical run, providing it complies with Academy rules. It is distributed by Cinephil.

Pablo Álvarez-Mesa’s “The Soldier’s Lagoon”—which traces...

“The Battle for Laikipia” offers a prescient perspective by focusing on the communities that are living with the consequences of climate change right now: the ranchers and pastoralists of Laikipia, located on the equator in Kenya. These people, their cattle, their farms — their means of life — have been dealing with drought. Over a period of approximately two years, the documentary’s directors Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi show how climate change can directly resurface tensions that have been kept at bay for generations. When resources dwindle, battles arise.

The framework for the feature is how colonialism still manages to impact indigenous people many years after their nations were granted independence. Many Brits migrated to Kenya during the time of the empire; their descendants still live there and own much of the land in Laikipia. The region is also home to many indigenous, semi-nomadic people who raise cattle. “The Battle for...

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:Dox) has unveiled the line-ups for its five competitive sections for its 2024 edition. All films in the main Dox:Award competition are world premieres for the second successive year.

Scroll down for the full list of competition titles

Titles in that section include Alessandra Celesia’s The Flats, a France-uk-Ireland-Belgium co-production about Belfast youngsters accessing their memories of the Troubles. Belfast-based Italian filmmaker Celesia has previously made documentaries including 2017’s Anatomy Of A Miracle, which played at Locarno.

The 12-strong Dox:Award competition also includes Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s UK title Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other,...

When film composer and multi-instrumentalist William Ryan Fritch got the call to work on the new Sundance documentary, “The Battle for Laikipia,” he remembers his first reaction. 20 to 24 cues in two and a half weeks. Wow. But after watching the film, it was a no-brainer. “I’ll figure out the how,” he said.

Co-directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi, “The Battle for Laikipia” follows the story of Indigenous pastoralists — farmers who breed and care for animals in the wildlife conservation haven of Laikipia, Kenya — as they struggle to overcome conflicts with landowners and the impact of colonialism.

“It’s just take-your-breath away, raw, arresting humanity, done so exquisitely well,” says Fritch.

Fritch says his admiration for the film’s crew made it an easy decision to join the sprint to finish the production in time for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

“I knew they were extraordinarily thoughtful, ethical documentarians,” says Fritch.

Exclusive: The Ford Foundation is coming through for documentary filmmakers in a big way.

Today, the nonprofit philanthropic institution announced its latest round of grants under the foundation’s JustFilms division — $4.2 million that will go to support “59 innovative film projects centered on social justice globally and in the United States.”

Among the recipients are Union, the film directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story that just held its world premiere at Sundance, and fellow Sundance premiere The Battle for Laikipia, directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi. Union, about the battle to unionize an Amazon facility on Staten Island, New York, is in U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance. The Battle for Laikipia, in World Cinema Documentary Competition at the festival, examines “a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.” Roger Ross Williams and Toni Kamau are among the producers of Laikipia.

This year’s World Cinema Docu Competition sees The Painter and the Thief (2020) filmmaker Benjamin Ree among the pack of ten. Here is the line-up:

Agent of Happiness / Bhutan, Hungary — Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way? World Premiere. Available online for Public.

The Battle for Laikipia / Kenya, U.S.A. — Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.…...

A programme of in-person and online events will run from March 6-10.

Glasgow Film Festival has confirmed the full programme for its 2022 industry focus strand, with participating speakers including BFI Film Fund director Mia Bays and Screen Scotland executive director Isabel Davis.

The programme will run both in-person and online from March 6-10, with physical events held at the main festival hub in Glasgow’s DoubleTree Hilton hotel.

Bays is attending in the latest stop on her listening tour, meeting with filmmakers, creatives and other industry figures to hear about their experience with the BFI Film Fund and what they...

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is on the jury for the key UK film prize.

Lee Haven Jones, Harry Wootliff and Rob Savage, the directors of The Feast, True Things and Dashcam respectively, have been shortlisted for the £50,000 Iwc Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award in association with the BFI, which will be presented on Sunday October 17 as part of the BFI London Film Festival (Lff).

Haven Jones has been selected for his debut feature, while Wootliff and Savage are both selected for their second films. This year’s winner will be chosen by writer, actor and producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, alongside BFI CEO Ben Roberts.

The Kenyan Film Classification Board has done it again — and by “it,” we mean “banned a movie for depicting same-sex relationships in a positive way.”

The film in question is “I Am Samuel,” a documentary from director Peter Murimi, in which “Samuel, a gay Kenyan man, balances duty to his family with his love for his partner, Alex, in a country where their love is criminalised,” according to the film’s logline.

In a statement made public Thursday, the Kfcb denounced the film as “a clear and deliberate attempt by the producer, to promote same-sex marriage as an acceptable way of life.” The board also complained that this is a violation of the country’s laws outlawing homosexuality.

In addition, the board seems to have been particularly offended that the film attempted to show that Kenyans are becoming tolerant of sexual minorities. “I am Samuel,” the statement said, “tries to...

Peter Murimi’s film vividly conveys resilience, contrasting the intimacy of a brave couple with the brutality of prejudice

Filmed over five years, this documentary, directed by Peter Murimi, opens on a striking note that contrasts intimacy with cruelty. A date between Sam, the film’s subject, and his boyfriend Alex is juxtaposed with the brutal footage of a violent attack on one of Murimi’s own friends. Witnessing the tender connection between the couple in a society where people in such relationships can undergo physical harm as well as legal punishment affirms the courageous, moving joy of queer love and the bravery of the men who participate in the documentary.

Having grown up in a small Kenyan village, Sam struggles with his sexuality until he moves to Nairobi, where he finds romance and acceptance. The bustling city might seem claustrophobic, with its rows of cramped apartments, yet introspective moments,...

Peter Murimi’s documentary to launch on digital platform Bohemia Euphoria.

Bohemia Media has acquired UK, Ireland and North America rights to documentary I Am Samuel and plans to launch it on upcoming streaming platform, Bohemia Euphoria.

The feature directorial debut of Kenyan journalist Peter Murimi is an intimate portrait of a queer Kenyan man and his partner, and their experiences in a country where their love is criminalized. The documentary previously played at the UK’s BFI Flare and London film festivals.

The deal, which was struck directly with the filmmakers, will see the film launch on June 3 in...

Not to be confused with Sean Penn’s attempt at Oscar bait, I Am Samuel is a documentary from Peter Murimi about the gay community in Kenya. Focused on Samuel, a rural Kenyan and his partner Alex, as they journey back and forth from their adopted home in Nairobi to the village where Samuel grew up. Following Samuel’s attempt to live peacefully with his conservative family, but also honestly about himself and his relationship.

There’s a breadth to I Am Samuel which highlights the benefits and pitfalls of documentary filmmaking. Absent of any real narrative direction Samuel’s situation, a gay man living in Kenya, where homosexuality is punishable by prison and gay men are routinely beaten on the street by cheering crowds, has enough drama in itself. The documentary is merely an attempt to capture Samuel’s life in all its tensions and mundanities. Work, play, family,...

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival presents its first full digital edition of bold new films that will be available nationwide, in response to this time of crisis, Human Rights Watch said today. The film festival will feature in-depth online discussions with filmmakers, film subjects, and Human Rights Watch researchers.

As individuals and communities across the world struggle to face the challenges of an unprecedented global pandemic, the restriction of basic human rights – including pathways to medical and economic survival – are felt most severely by those already impacted by stark inequalities. Now more than ever, the world needs powerful and uplifting stories about those demanding justice, equality and safety for themselves, their communities and future generations.

John Biaggi, Director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival says “At a time when the world is experiencing a profound shared adversity, it is particularly heartening to witness the brave individuals and strong...