Wanuri Kahiu

Wanuri Kahiu (born 21 June 1980) is a Kenyan film director, producer, and author.

She is considered to be “one of Africa's most aspiring directors, being part of a new, vibrant crop of talents representing contemporary African culture”.

The film fictionalizes the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998.

It tells the story of a young girl, Tamani, who loses her mother in the attack and is told by her father that her mother is missing when she is actually deceased.

Tamani searches for her mother, painting hearts across the city, she also befriends a policeman named Abu.

Abu helps Tamani as the viewers discover the shame he feels for not stopping his friend who helped attack the embassy.

As Dennis Harvey writes in his review for the Daily Variety, the “interactions between the young woman and older man let both come to terms with a painful past they were helpless to prevent”.

Film scholar, Clara Giruzzi highlights Kahiu's display of an African feminist sensibility, displayed by the egalitarian relationships in the film, and the pacifist messages in the wake of national trauma, which challenge essentialist and universalist western perspectives of Africa.

Dennis Harvey, for the Daily Variety, writes that despite the film's occasional "titled" writing and performances, the drama "effectively puts the causes and aftermath of large terrorist actions in personal terms."

As she notes in an interview, Kahiu still remembers the event, despite being a young teenager at the time.

She refers to the bombing as “a horrific and traumatic event from Kenya”.

She remembers her mother treating several patients who were the victims of the bombing.

Upon graduating from the University of Warwick in 2001 with a BSc degree in Management Science, she decided to go back into the arts and obtained a Masters of Fine Arts degree in production/directing at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theatre, Film and Television.

Kahiu began her filmmaking career by interning for F. Gary Gray's office, which allowed her to work on the production of his 2003 film The Italian Job (2003).

As she explains, Gray taught her to

“keep an eye on the bigger picture but not to take the details for granted”.

In 2006, Kahiu made her professional debut directing a behind-the-scenes documentary The Spark that Unites about a feature film Catch a Fire directed by Phillip Noyce.

Working together led to Kahiu and Noyce becoming close friends.

When talking about this experience, Kahiu notes that it was Noyce who encouraged her to go back to her home country, Kenya, to tell stories.

As she explains, Noyce emphasized the importance of “[being] a local success first before becoming an international storyteller”.

Ras Star

Ras Star is Kahiu's first short narrative film, which she directed in 2006.

It tells the story of Amani, a teenage rapper, living with his Islamic aunt and uncle in Nairobi.

Amani dreams of being a rapper, and secretly practices for a local talent show.

However, he and his brother get dragged into local criminal activities in their neighborhood.

Her first feature film, From a Whisper (2008), received a total of 12 nominations and earned five awards at the 5th Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009.

Among other nominations, the film was nominated for the Best Picture Award, Best Screenplay Award, and Best Director Award.

It ended up winning in all three categories.

She has received several awards and nominations for the films which she directed, including the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009 for her dramatic feature film From a Whisper.

She is also the co-founder of AFROBUBBLEGUM, a media collective dedicated to supporting African art for its own sake.

Kahiu was born in Nairobi, Kenya.

She currently lives between Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya.

In an interview with Vogue Italia, the filmmaker describes herself as a black sheep to her conservative parents; her mother is a doctor and her father a businessman.

Yet, her aunt is an actress in Kenya and her uncle is a sculptor.

She comes from a line of “strong, forward-thinking women”, with her mother being one of the first female pediatricians in the area they lived in.

In her 2014 TED talk titled No More Labels, Kahiu mentions that growing up in Kenya, she didn't encounter a lot of love stories coming from Africa.

Because of that, some of her work attempts to depict such love stories.

Despite her family's professional background, Kahiu decided to pursue a career in the arts.

At the age of 16, she discovered her passion for filmmaking that came from her love for reading and storytelling.

However, after graduating from high school, Kahiu decided to get “a proper degree” at University of Warwick in England.