Isaac Nab­wana: ​‘We should tell our own sto­ries in the way we want’

“Home of Da Best of Da Best Movies”, full of ​“supa action”, the films emerg­ing from Wakali­wood – the action movies made by Ramon Film Pro­duc­tions out of Wakali­ga, the slums in Uganda’s cap­i­tal Kam­pala, are thrilling, inven­tive DIY film­mak­ing. The stu­dio, now inter­na­tion­al­ly famous, was found­ed by Isaac Nab­wana (aka Nab­wana I.G.G.) direc­tor of Who Killed Cap­tain Alex?, Bad Black, plus many oth­ers. Made on a shoe­string bud­get, these rig­or­ous­ly chore­o­graphed films fea­ture props all made in-house.

More than that, they also come with their own unique style: like the ​“video jok­er” who cracks wise over each scene. The new doc­u­men­tary Once Upon a Time in Ugan­da chron­i­cles the pro­lif­er­a­tion of this stu­dio, as well as Isaac’s jour­ney from expe­ri­enc­ing films by proxy (he would have them described to him), to hav­ing his own work screened at a film fes­ti­val. Ahead of the film’s release, we spoke to Nab­wana him­self about learn­ing kung fu from mag­a­zines, Chuck Nor­ris posters, mak­ing films abroad, and Wakaliwood’s future.

This inter­view has been edit­ed and con­densed for clarity.

You’ve gained a lot of inter­na­tion­al atten­tion since you first made Who Killed Cap­tain Alex. Has that changed much about how you make your films?

Yes. Some­how yes, because I believe that it has not changed my touch of mak­ing the movies. I nor­mal­ly make a trail­er, I put it out and then peo­ple ask me if the movie’s out and then I start a dis­cus­sion. Now I tweet and start a dis­cus­sion there. But that also reminds me of how now I’m using peo­ple vis­it­ing from dif­fer­ent parts of the world in my movies. Plus if you look at Bad Black, Alan [Hof­ma­n­is, an Amer­i­can film fes­ti­val direc­tor who is now Wakaliwood’s Head of Inter­na­tion­al PR and Sales] act­ed in that movie… he looked like a British guy, but peo­ple were call­ing him Van Damme. But for me, he was also help­ful in the sense that Ugan­dans did not believe that we can make movies. Most of the movies they were see­ing were from Hol­ly­wood, so there would be white guys all over it. So now when we got Alan, for me, I used him to say some­thing like, ​“Yes, this is my Hol­ly­wood here, now.”

You got your muzun­gu [Writer’s Note: muzun­gu basi­cal­ly means ​‘for­eign­er’ or ​‘white per­son’ in most Ban­tu languages].

Yes.

In the doc­u­men­tary you spoke about the pop­u­lar­i­ty of your ​“beat up the muzun­gu” films. 

Peo­ple like that. They want muzun­gu to be beat­en seri­ous­ly. If you watch this movie Eat­en Alive, because the muzun­gu [Writer’s Note: it’s Alan] is going to be eat­en. He’s going to be eat­en alive. So I think peo­ple will like that part. When he’s first beat­en, first punched and then runs all over the vil­lage and they’re eat­ing him.

There was a fun behind-the-scenes seg­ment about Alan being eat­en in your zom­bie movie Eat­en Alive in Ugan­da. How is that film com­ing along? Seems you’ve been work­ing on it for some time. 

I’m edit­ing it. The truth is I lost the movie I think in 2019, ​’18, around there. Some­one came here and stole my hard dri­ves, sev­en of them. So I lost almost every­thing. Nor­mal­ly when I shoot, I try to put on dif­fer­ent hard dri­ves. Now I have like 80% of the movie. I’m try­ing to fin­ish it very soon. I tell you, I’m edit­ing it every day. I’ve stopped almost every­thing because I’ve realised that I have almost 80% of the movie.

In the doc­u­men­tary, you said that where you live, cin­e­mas are for the rich. What was the alternative?

Yeah, what I mean by ​“cin­e­mas”, there are these big pro­fes­sion­al cin­e­mas, like the cin­e­mas in the West. Those are the ones for the rich. But we have small­er local cin­e­mas in Ugan­da, and they start­ed around ​’86, ​’83. They start­ed as bars or dra­ma stages, and then these guys would add a deck and a loud­speak­er. Some­times oth­ers have got a pro­jec­tor. Those are the cin­e­ma halls. They would put a film poster out­side, and in the ​’80s most of them were drawn. I liked the posters with Bruce Lee on them, hold­ing a chain. And I liked the Chuck Nor­ris ones: more of a cow­boy, but hold­ing a big gun. You could see from the poster that action is com­ing. But I nev­er watched cin­e­ma the prop­er way, like in cin­e­ma halls. Our par­ents believed that if you go and watch movies, you’ll get addict­ed to movies and then you’ll not want to go to school.

How did VJ Emmie first become part of your movies? 

I was mar­ket­ing movies all over the coun­try, and then I realised that there were young peo­ple, who don’t have DVDs at home, who hung out in the local cin­e­ma hall in the evening to watch movies. So when I put my movies there, they didn’t like them because they did not have a VJ. So I had to find a VJ. So I went to VJ Jjin­go, who was my favourite at the time. When I reached out to him, I said, ​“You’re not a trans­la­tor, you are a video jok­er, I just need jokes the way you usu­al­ly do it.” He said no.

So I had to find four VJs, but Emmie became the best. So we approached him and he said the same thing, ​“How can I trans­late a Ugan­dan movie to Ugan­dans?” So I said, ​“Try it.” We had a screen­ing that evening, and Emmie was so excit­ed to see that peo­ple are also inter­est­ed in Ugan­dan movies to be VJed. So I think that gave him a lot of ener­gy. Even though I made the movie, it was like new, he put in a lot of jokes, put it in anoth­er direc­tion. I was like, ​“Why didn’t I think about this when I was mak­ing it?”

I saw that you shot some of your new film, Bruce U, in Chi­na. I was hop­ing to know more about how that happened.

I was spot­ted on social media by Chi­nese peo­ple look­ing for places where kung fu is most loved. So they were under a com­pa­ny called Star­Times, a tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny which is sup­ply­ing dish­es or some­thing like that in Africa, I think. So they were mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary, I think, which was sup­posed to be screened in Chi­na with the aid of sub-states from Africa. So I was part of that doc­u­men­tary, and they brought me to China.

They took me to a Shaolin tem­ple, where I met the real abbot. I had to ask the oth­ers to ask him if he can be part of my movie. When they talked to him, he said, ​“Yes, I want to be, what can I do?” Then I start­ed direct­ing him as they were trans­lat­ing. I told him that, ​“I want you to meet this team, who learned kung fu from these Chi­nese mar­tial arts mag­a­zines, then you demon­strate for them, and they’ll demon­strate for you. After that you hand them to anoth­er mas­ter who is going to teach them in the Shaolin tem­ple.” He was speak­ing, and then they trans­lat­ed to me. After that, we stayed there for a num­ber of days and we met the oth­er monks in the Shaolin tem­ple. We exchanged ideas, we ate din­ner with them.

It was like a dream come true. Because we used to teach our­selves kung fu, and now we’re see­ing Shaolin monks, talk­ing to them, even direct­ing them.

Look­ing to the future – have the Wakas­tarz [a group of young Ugan­dans who per­form and write scripts] start­ed becom­ing direc­tors in their own right as well?

Yeah, in my new movie I’m mak­ing, The Clan Leader, the main char­ac­ter is Isaac New­ton Kiz­ito, a kid who was in Crazy World. I also made Mil­lion Dol­lar Kid with him, and my aim was attract­ing a new gen­er­a­tion. That’s why The Clan Leader is a super­hero movie cause I see them, they’re lov­ing those. So that’s why I cast him as a super­hero now, at 15. He’s in the movies act­ing, but he can also direct a lit­tle. He always makes sug­ges­tions, because we are fam­i­ly here. Yes, I would say I’m the chief direc­tor, but they’re also direct­ing because he can tell you that, ​“What if I do some­thing like this?” So that is already directing.

And he’s also behind the mak­ing of the graph­ics on the com­put­er, dur­ing COVID he taught him­self with YouTube tuto­ri­als. The future is basi­cal­ly the Wakas­tarz. I feel like if I could get a piece of land some­where and then I put a school, I want to teach. I want to be a very good teacher and a big stu­dio for action movies in Africa.

Hav­ing a plat­form for action movies in Africa feels impor­tant – like Alan said in the film, they’re not some­thing that African film­mak­ers are expect­ed to make. 

So many peo­ple have been call­ing me and ask­ing ​“Why do you make action movies? Why don’t you make a movie on cholera, on malar­ia? What exact­ly do I learn from your movies?” I’m not the min­is­ter of edu­ca­tion, I’m under enter­tain­ment. It’s not what peo­ple want from Africa. They want us to talk about pover­ty. But we should also tell our own sto­ries in the way we want. I mean, action is not from any one place in this world. Tal­ent is every­where. It can be here. We are also enter­tain­ers. I stress that we should tell our own sto­ries, because many of our sto­ries have been poor­ly told.

Once Upon a Time in Ugan­da is play­ing in UK cin­e­mas from Fri­day 8 September.