If 2024 was generally considered a bad year for film; 2025 seems more than ready to undo all that.
Remember, 2024 had fewer short films released and less than ten feature film premieres. Which is why when Jua Kali the Ugandan short film was advertised at the end of 2024, it was clear there was indeed light somewhere.
Jua Kali was just the second high quality short film premiering on video social space, YouTube in a space of two weeks, the first being Boundary Mwisho by Hakim Zziwa.
Jua Kali was directed by Nersky, a relatively new filmmaker who is deeply passionate and experimental.
And it’s not only with this film, he has been experimental even with his first short film, Scold’s Bridle and The Man with a Bold Head; his are futuristic, unhinged and definitely has a certain appetite for violence, grime and blood all over the place.
His two first films must have been dares between friends, a couple of them came together and made a film.
Much as they all come out well, technically, there was a certain lack of dedication from his acting staff, they were mostly on a job to have fun and later move on with life.
Like this, most of his earlier shorts fall short in some ways.
But then he did Jua Kali, it’s a Kiswahili word for making artisan work.
The film however has very little to do with making art or artisan work, in fact, in a way, it’s a film about a dystopian future where slavery has been reintroduced and this time, it’s not racial but a matter of the weak and the strong.
Jua Kali stars Peninah Nampanga (Maria, Sabotage, and Sanyu), she is the reigning best actress thanks to her role in Maria. Having her on the project was a major eyeball pull considering the fact that she dominates scenes she’s part of.
The film is about her and her husband, separated by human traffickers, at least that’s what we believe for a bigger part of the film.
However, he later shows up to claim his wife and free all the other abducted people in what is expected to be a show off of skills, gun-slinging and technique.
Based on who you ask, something was delivered, but for drama heads, the film falls short.
As said earlier, the man and his wife were separated by someone that took her as a slave, we do not know if she is the only slave he took or there were others.
If she was the only one, the film still does so little to establish why. The storyteller goes on not to tell us why the man, our villain, was taking people as captives, was it to sell them to the highest bidder or to work on his fields.
Much of the film is a badass talk by our protagonist, portrayed by Patrick Kaboyo, rather than showing what he can actually do. Plus, for a man who was effortlessly separated from his wife, we do not get context on how he became so good as a fighter and shooter in a snap.
Anyway, Jua Kali is an enjoyable film and could have become even a good short film had the directors stayed with their script just a little longer.
It is a film with promise but was somehow rushed from its writing pad.