Kenyan film voices the stories of the country’s LGBTI community
Stories of Our Lives, which tells the stories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Kenyans, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Stories of Our Lives is a film presented by Kenyan creative multidisciplinary group, The Nest. Shot over eight months on a $15.000 budget, the film features five vignettes which are based on true stories: Ask Me Nicely, Run, Athman, Duet and Each Night I Dream.
According to The Nest website, the group says, “After several months of touring and collecting hundreds of vivid, compelling stories, we decided to turn some of these stories into short films. We wrote the scripts based on some of the stories we’d recorded, and we shot the films over the course of eight months using ourselves as the crew - and learned a lot as we went along.”
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September with full credits. Director Jim Chuchu, writer Njoki Ngumi and executive producer George Gachara travelled to the festival for the screening.
“For us - this film is about fighting openly for the right of Africans to have different opinions, different worldviews, different identities and dreams - and for all these multiple identities to co-exist. We made this film because we believe strongly that the fight for the right to define one’s self, the right to be complex and different and unique, should be fought for proudly and openly,” said The Nest.
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