March 10: Triple Oscars treat

United Kingdom - 2022 - Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo - 114 min.

Democracy in Uganda exists only on paper. The current president Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1984, and he’s got no plans to resign. Despite this, Kamwokya, a slum in the capital Kampala, generates an opposition movement personified by ghetto pop star Bobi Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi). The film’s directors Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo follow Wine and his wife Barbie over several years, documenting his rise. It starts in 2014 with protest songs against the regime and culminates in 2021 with a run for the presidency.

The filmmakers are right where the action is happening, and that can mean they’re in the thick of the violence. They paint a shocking picture of the state of politics in Uganda, a country where the incumbent president has never relinquished his position without a fight.

Ukraine - 2023 - Mstyslav Chernov - 94 min.

During the Russian siege in 2022, unspeakably gruesome and bloody images of the countless dead and wounded victims of bombings and shootings in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol were seen around the world—thanks in part to the work of Ukrainian AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov. With great difficulty in this city lacking electricity and internet coverage, he managed to share these shocking and now-iconic images, such as the pregnant woman being carried on a gurney from a bombed-out maternity clinic.

This documentary offers an even more powerful and mind-boggling impression of the siege—if such a thing is possible. The footage is pin-sharp, though sometimes jittery due to the explosions. In his soft-spoken voice-over, we hear Chernov talking about his emotional response to the 20 days that transformed this normal city into a shattered ruin.

Chile - 2023 - Maite Alberdi - 85 min.

Augusto Góngora was once a well-known TV journalist in Chile. In the 1970s and 1980s, he clandestinely filmed testimonies about human rights violations under the Pinochet dictatorship. So as not to forget. He has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several years, and his wife, a famous Chilean actress and former minister of culture, has to remind him every day of who he was and is, who she is, and why they are together. She does so unrelentingly, with extraordinary devotion and ingenuity.

Combining archive footage, home videos and sober filming by the director (or by Paulina herself, for example during Covid), Maite Alberdi (The Mole Agent) creates a tender and unforgettable portrait of a national and personal past, a great love, and a disease that goes from bad to worse.

• Venue: IDFA Vondelpark Pavilion, Vondelpark 3 in Amsterdam. Find here all info about the venue’s accessibility.
• Ticket price: Regular: €12. CJP and Stadspas holders: €9. Students: €6. Tickets with a discounted rate are only valid upon presentation of the corresponding pass at the event.
  
• The films have English subtitles.