KENYAN CO-PRODUCED FILM GRABS EURO AWARD

Ugandan David Mugisha’s feature film project ‘The Boda Boda Thieves’ won a whooping 10,000 Euro VFF Highlight Pitch Award at the 10th Edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus in late February 2012.

Participants at this Talent project had the opportunity to present their film projects in a professional setting to potential international co-producers and distributers. It seems that ‘The Boda Boda Thieves’ had what it took to grab the top prize.

‘The Boda Boda Thieves’ received funding at the 3rd Africa Producer’s Forum of the 10th Tarifa African Film Festival in Spain where the film secured a co-production deal with Kenya’s Hot Sun Films.

The film also received special mention in the International Relations ARTE prize for Excellence in Script Writing.

Last year, Mugisha’s film was just one in 5 selected to benefit from the World Cinema Fund’s allocated $283,000, garnering $81,000 of that. South Africa’s Switch Films also signed on to produce the project.

The film’s synopsis reads:

When Goodman gets a job for his son Abel as driver of a motorbike taxi or “Boda-Boda”, he feels like things are possibly finally going his way, that is, until a gang of thieves robs Abel of his treasured motorbike. We follow Goodman and his son Abel on their quest through the city to find their “Boda Boda” and in the process gain an insider’s view of urban Africa, its underworld and the generation gap between urban migrants and their first generation children.