Worth: $18.50
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Cast:
Bobi Wine, Barbie Kyagulanyi, President Yoweri Museveni
Intro:
...doco filmmaking at its powerhouse, soulful, meaningful best.
One of the most alternatively uplifting and heartbreaking (often at the same time) documentaries of recent years, Bobi Wine: The People’s President is thrillingly political, but even more thrillingly personal, with directors Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp granted incredible access to their subjects. This brings the audience right inside the issue, placing them directly alongside a small group of brave, passionate, deeply committed people who constantly put themselves directly in the path of extreme danger. It’s compelling, edge of the seat stuff, with the thrilling pace of Bobi Wine: The People’s President often making it feel more like a feature film than a doco. It’s a heady, intense, beautifully made film that paints a stunning portrait of a troubled nation rarely seen on screen today, but one that seized international attention in the 1970s thanks to its infamously deranged dictator and brutal despot of note, Idi Amin.
Kicking off with a ragingly immediate and urgent sequence of guns-blazing, urban unrest, Bobi Wine: The People’s President steps right into the violent fray that is the African nation of Uganda. Wracked by poverty, civil fracture, and a cost-of-living crisis that makes Australia’s look like a minor piece of penny pinching, Uganda has long been under the thumb of President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986. A true autocrat, Museveni fought in 2017 to have a key point in the Ugandan constitution changed, namely the part that says you can’t be in charge if you’re over 75. No prizes to those who correctly guess Museveni’s age at the time.
Many were in opposition to Museveni’s self-serving move, the most vocal being the charismatic Bobi Vine, a much-loved music star whose politicised songs position him as something of a Ugandan Marley or Dylan. Riding an extraordinary wave of people power, Bobi Wine – backed by his tough and supportive wife Barbie Kyagulanyi and a crew of passionate supporters – makes a push first into politics, and then takes a shot at the top job, much to the consternation of President Yoweri Museveni, a ruler so singularly creepy and insufferable he could almost score a job as a Bond villain. What follows lifts the spirits as Bobi Wine engages with the people of Uganda and pushes for change, and then crushes them when Museveni and his goons spring into action to quell what begins to look like a possible revolution.
Filled with moments of stunning intimacy (Bobi and Barbie informing their children around the dinner table that they will have to be relocated to the US for their own safety), horrific violence (the attacks on Bobi and his followers are brutal), maddening infuriation (President Yoweri Museveni claim that Bobi Wine “has the homosexuals on his side” will literally boil the blood), and rousing excitement (the images of Bobi rallying the troops from the back of a motorcycle speeding through the city streets are unforgettable), Bobi Wine: The People’s President is an exhilarating depiction of a nation briefly shown what hope looks like by a true hero. From terrifying opening to bittersweet ending, this is doco filmmaking at its powerhouse, soulful, meaningful best.
