Oscar Would be Nice but Freedom Would be Better, Says Bobi Wine
When the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were announced on Jan. 23, something odd happened around the home of Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine. The security forces, which had been keeping him under house arrest, quietly disappeared.
That was because a large spotlight had been turned on after the film “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film. The People’s President was co-directed by British director Christopher Sharp, who was born in Uganda, and Moses Bwayo, a Ugandan. It follows singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine and his campaign in the run-up to the 2021 elections in which he ran against President Yoweri Museveni, who by then had been in power for 35 years. He agreed to have cameras follow him for several months. They captured the unpredictability and risks for Bobi and his wife Barbie of taking on the Ugandan establishment.
Sharp hopes the Oscar nomination will shed more light on what he points out is an autocratic government which is generally accepted by the West as democratic, despite evidence to the contrary. “We witnessed so many atrocities while filming,” Sharp told Semafor Africa. “There are so many people who get picked up and taken away, tortured, and disappear completely.”
He hopes the Oscars publicity — and particularly the attention drawn to Uganda in the United States — makes Bobi, his family, and supporters safer. “We hope the film will save lives and I genuinely think it can,” said Sharp. “It’s important to Museveni’s government, especially now there’s so much light being shone upon them, to be a bit more careful.”
But while Sharp would of course be delighted to win, he doesn’t think that would be the most important achievement. “I don’t think it matters. The amount of attention this Oscar process puts on the situation in Uganda has been fantastic,” he said. “Obviously to win would be even more attention, but we’ve really shone a light on the country. So I think the work has actually been done.”
