Once Upon a Time in Ugan­da review – an effu­sive love letter

In the slums of Wakali­ga with­in the Ugan­dan cap­i­tal of Kam­pala lies a cra­dle of grass­roots action cin­e­ma and the first makeshift brick in the foun­da­tions of the Ugan­dan film indus­try: Ramon Film Pro­duc­tions, also known as Wakali­wood. It all rests on the shoul­ders of Isaac Nab­wana, a self taught direc­tor, writer, pro­duc­er, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, edi­tor and com­mu­ni­ty builder whose sheer, unstop­pable ambi­tion has led him to make dozens of auda­cious action films with extreme­ly lim­it­ed resources at his dis­pos­al, all to achieve a dream of mak­ing the action movies that he grew up with, ​“like Hol­ly­wood, but better”.

Cathryne Czubek’s doc­u­men­tary is pow­ered by the pas­sion and resource­ful­ness of Nab­wana and his equal­ly pas­sion­ate and ener­getic crew (made up of friends, fam­i­ly, neigh­bours) whose unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty-spe­cif­ic exploita­tion cin­e­ma is noth­ing short of inspi­ra­tional. What dri­ves them is a desire to see the image of their peo­ple pro­ject­ed onto the sil­ver screen by all means necessary.

Indeed, if one man’s trash is anoth­er man’s trea­sure, then dis­card­ed scraps are gold to Nab­wana and Wakali­wood, whose tech­ni­cal equip­ment is forged of mud bricks and poles cob­bled and weld­ed togeth­er, while pro­duc­tions rely on hand­made props, self-taught mar­tial arts per­form­ers, ama­teur com­put­er graph­ics, and bud­gets well below $200.

The doc­u­men­tary also spends a con­sid­er­able chunk of its run­time pro­fil­ing film programmer/​producer Alan Hof­ma­n­is, a New York­er who, upon being dumped by a for­mer girl­friend and after being swept away by Nabwana’s 2010 film Who Killed Cap­tain Alex? (the trail­er of which became a viral YouTube sen­sa­tion) gives up his life in the States to trav­el to Ugan­da and become a dis­ci­ple on the divine mis­sion to spread the Wakali­wood gospel to the rest of the world. Hof­ma­n­is ends up a key mem­ber of the Wakali­wood team, and though he remains well-inten­tioned through­out, the doc’s reliance on his inter­nal strug­gles means we end up sub­ject­ed to the triv­ial griev­ances of some­one with a bad case of main char­ac­ter syndrome.

He throws a tantrum when Nab­wana – who was mak­ing films long before Hof­ma­n­is showed up – doesn’t con­sult him about cer­tain choic­es, in what ulti­mate­ly plays out like a soft-script­ed, crude­ly shoe­horned, and rather unin­ter­est­ing con­flict. Nar­ra­tive manip­u­la­tion aside, split­ting the doc­u­men­tary between the two men serves more as a struc­tur­al means to an end that cul­mi­nates in Hof­ma­n­is’ achieve­ment in screen­ing the Wakali­wood film Crazy World as the clos­ing film of Mid­night Mad­ness at the 2019 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Festival.

“What real­ly unites us is movies”, says Nab­wana, yet in a world order where cap­i­tal reigns king and per­pet­u­al­ly rears its ugly head over cin­e­ma as indus­try, we can’t be too mad at the impor­tance the doc places on Hof­ma­n­is’ achieve­ments in mar­ket­ing and secur­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion deals for Nab­wana and his crew. Ulti­mate­ly, Once Upon a Time in Ugan­da would have ben­e­fit­ted from div­ing much deep­er into the mak­ing of the studio’s many icon­ic pro­duc­tions, but by mir­ror­ing Wakaliwood’s live­ly, exu­ber­ant ener­gy, still comes togeth­er as a thor­ough­ly enter­tain­ing crowdpleaser.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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