The African Film Festival will mark its 10th year when it returns to Washington University on Friday, offering three days packed with the titular continent’s cinema. Many of the festival’s shorts and features are unlikely to find wider distribution in the U.S., so savvy global cinephiles will make plans to catch them at Brown Hall this weekend. One of the festival’s best discoveries this year is the sprawling crime drama Veve, the debut feature from Kenyan director Simon Mukali.
Recalling the works of Ray, Altman, and Iñárritu, the film’s screenplay by Natasha Likimani weaves together numerous lives in the central Kenyan town of Maua. Veve’s events churn primarily around the public persona and secret misdeeds of Amos (Lowry Odhiambo), formerly a local farmer and now a minister of parliament. Amos is glad-hander who fancies himself a new Churchill or Obama, but he’s also a kingpin in the local trade in khat (known locally as veve), a plant with stimulant properties. Amos’ wife Esther (Lizz Njagah) initially has little awareness of her husband’s ruthlessness, but the politician’s taciturn right-hand man Sammy (Conrad Makeni) has no illusions. Meanwhile, ex-con Kenzo (Emo Rugene) enters the picture with a lethal grudge against Amos, but becomes embroiled in the man’s life in unanticipated ways.
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Likimani’s story mostly follows the expected contours for an ensemble melodrama about corruption, violence, and betrayal. However, Mukali’s confident, perceptive direction and the robust performances—particularly Makeni’s conflicted bagman and Rugene’s inscrutable loner—are where Veve shines. The film balances tense observation of character with expansive use of Kenyan locations both polished and tumbledown, lending an aura of humane realism to plot turns that would otherwise strain belief. In short, Veve neatly illustrates how a stale Hollywood outline can be invigorated in the hands of a native African filmmaker.
Veve screens on Friday, March 27 at 7 p.m., in Room 100 of Washington University’s Brown Hall. It will be preceded by the Kenyan short film Soko Sonko. As with all films at the African Film Festival, admission is free.
