Kenyan filmmaker Vincho Nuchogu will make his feature director debut in the idyllic drama One Woman One Bra.
Written and directed by NCHOGU, the film is produced by Josh Olaorwa for Lagos-based iron concept media and is lensed by Nigerian cinematographer Muhammadutatta. A Kenya-Nigeria co-produced, it is the first Nigerian film to premiere in Lido.
“One Woman One Bra” is located in the Kenya village of Sayit. However, these actions are based on kinship and raise the question for the 38-year-old Star (Sara Karei).
Risk of losing her home, Starr has to prove her rights to the land or find a way to raise money to buy it in full. More and more desperate, she decides to sign a morally suspicious deal with an NGO to create a film title recognition campaign.
Its video campaign stems from misconceptions between the star and the UK aid workers and is based on the experiences of NCHOGU as an aspiring filmmaker in East Africa. The director began working for a nonprofit organization and created what he now considers as a “propaganda film.”
In these “message-based” films, NCHOGU speaks of diversity. Her African subjects often say that they “suppress personal stories to fit the organization’s salvation myth.”
“If you make a film based on a problem, you’ll have more money (in East Africa),” she says. “Then the question is, are they telling the stories we really want to tell, or are the funds dictating the stories we tell?”
NCHOGU left Nairobi in 2010 and studied film at Columbia University. Shortly after our arrival in New York, the release of Kony 2012, a controversial documentary produced by non-profit, non-profit, invisible children, came on. Spurred by the support of Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, the documentary raised over $30 million for invisible children, making it a viral sensation. (Over 10 years later, Kony remains on a massive scale.)
While studying in New York, NCHOGU has found himself wondering where the money went, whether either of them benefited the children whose images were used in the 30-minute video, and whether they are “borrowing something” or “sacrificing lambs for a cause.” She began to appreciate the image of Africa from the past, reflecting the idea of a “white savior” on the continent and the “ability to own your story and know yourself.”
“The Kenyan story is told through (the perspective) when the colonists arrived and when they left. They inherited the story of how the colonists fed us,” she says. “How much has African history, African innovation, African creation been lost?
NCHOGU divides time between New York and the African continent. The African continent was where I met Nigerian producer Josh Olaorwa in 2021, and then worked for Mo Abudu’s Ebony Life in 2021.
The project won the Red Sea Souk Production Award for Nigerian children in search of mystical pink fish, but NCHOGU had already begun developing “One Woman One Bra.”
“Vincho has a lot of crazy ideas,” says Olaorwa with a laugh. “She called me one day and said, ‘Josh, wait a minute. I have this idea.’ Since then, he hasn’t returned for four years. ”
“One Woman One Bra” was shot in a village in nkosesia, and NCHOGU estimates that around 70% of the cast and crew were drawn from the community. This includes women from a travel theatre group who filled many of the film’s key roles, even having the script work at NCHOGU and taking over casting duties to “cast themselves into roles they thought were appropriate.”
“They were very invested in the story,” says NCHOGU. “It felt like a blessing to find that village.”
