This film is an adaptation of my own poem, which I had written while a Master’s student at the TU Berlin. As a first-year film student at the DFFB, we were given 30 minutes of 16mm stock with instructions to use only three locations and no more than three characters. I had one character and three locations. I told my tutor, Ebba Jahn, about my idea and she encouraged me to go ahead. I asked for her opinion because I thought that the poem was a bit strong on the race issue. I remember that the first time I showed the film I was very apprehensive about the reaction of the audience. At Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, where it premiered, a TV producer rebuked me for being uncompromising, but I replied that Mandela was not yet free (to my own surprise…I didn’t know where that came from).
I still feel very brave to have made it.
Wanjiru Kinyanjui
