The film explores the rural conflict in Kenya

An exciting age story of two teenagers in Kenya gathered in friendship through a crime, the documentary film Amani’s search It opens a window in complex tensions between conservatives, farmers in culture and pastors in Kenya, while the extreme drought conflicts them on the declining resources.

“When there is peace, people are not killed,” says Simon Ali, 18 years old, whose father, a safari guide, was killed at work at a conservation of wild life five years ago. “I know how peace is very important, because we are victims of the conflict.”

The stamp of Ali’s voice indicates when he passed since he received the news that his father was shot while guiding tourists through a wild area in Laikipia county in central Kenia.

Since then, Ali has traveled through five years of pain and adolescence while working on the film project, produced by Backroads Pictures, in which he is looking for answers to how, why and who was killed. Meanwhile, the backdrop of this story is a duration drought described as the worst that hit the region in 40 years.

As Ali steps in front of the room in Amani’s search – Amani It is the word Swahili for Peace – holds its own room while assuming the role of an end -being journalist. Under the mentor of the movie crew, he learns the ropes of journalism, hastens many of the people who have been on information about killing his father, Stephen Ali, and finds a resolution aspect for him and his family.

Kenya is the arrangement of the increasing conflict among those who have surrounded conservation land, cultural farmers and pastoral communities who have historically moved their herds more than now. As water and grazing decrease due to drought, confrontations between and communities have become more and more lethal.

Ali’s father was one of the victims.

But his friendship with Haron Lenges is the film’s strength tour.

The Ali family is from a traditional agricultural community. His close friend Lenges is from a pastoral family. As the film takes place, the spectators are invited to raise their chairs to the respective kitchen and to follow an intimate conversation between the two, which allows the viewer to appreciate the larger and longer cultures they represent.

“We wanted to tell age stories in various first -rate communities around the world,” says film producer Peter Goetz from Backroads Pictures. The idea was to find teenagers in regions as varied as Africa, Arctic and Pacific whose stories show how to live on the first line of the climatic crisis. The intention was to give each of them and let them be the storytellers.

When Goetz met Ali, not only did he find someone whose personal story is emblematic of many others whose lives were supported by the conflict led by the climate in Kenya, he also found someone who was already an aspirant investigation reporter. It seemed natural for me to teach him a room and let him become the storyteller.

The movie producer from Nairobi, Debra Aroko, came out of the project with a renewed feeling of hope after working with Ali and Lenges, whose youth and energy bring an unmistakable passion for the film and the public.

“It was important for the film to be displayed on the continent,” she says. “My hope is for other children on the continent to watch the film, to feel that they are represented and to learn this feeling of agency that I think is often refused.”

When Ali was present at the projections for the younger Western audience, AROKO says it is clear how much he relates to him and admires him because he remained in his mission and gathered people to help him with the investigation. “If this is the effect on the Western public, how great will the effect be when it will be brought back to Kenya and East Africa?”

Under the data points that follow the magnitude and advancement of the climatic crisis in Africa are the individual lives that are touched by drought, hunger, extreme heat, the spread of desert and the type of community-on-community between different agricultural cultures in Kenya. As a screenwriter, AROKO allows Ali’s own humanity to wear their communities.

“Behind each action or inaction (in the film) is a real human being that is affected (of this),” says AROKO. “It is a microcosm of the bigger problem: a family whose life was torn by something that would probably have been avoided if we had made measures to alleviate this problem.”

The center of the story is the memory that everyone should be able to have a good quality of life, no matter where they are.

In making the film, Goetz and the team came to see Ali to grow up, and the family is saddened by their father and husband. “My motivating factor, day by day, was to offer this family a platform and a voice,” says Goetz.

And while part of the movie team feels a feeling of hope after the project, Ali says he found an apparent peace by rigor the investigation process and the answers he revealed.

Amani’s search At least one African story follows on a global stage in which the stories in the global northern, usually crowd the others. By default in her story, how many people and institutions have failed the Ali family after the crime. Not only that the justice system did not investigate the shooting in detail – the assumption is that the armed pastors were the triggering men, but none were found or arrested – but many influential people close to Stephen Ali had information on the killing for which they did not take the initiative to share it with the most traumatized.

AROKO says that it should not be placed 13 years old in a situation where they should look for such answers.

Through the film, Ali and Langes get older as the story matures over the ten years of its manufacture. Today, Ali is on the adulthood cusp – fulfills September 19 in September – and is in the last year of the final high school year. He says he hopes to pick up the journalism cane once his secondary schooling is wrapped.

During the time it started from collaborating with Goetz, the conditions for conflict in Laikipia county only increased. People are still struggling with hunger, says Ali, offering an update to Laikipia conditions threatening conflict.

Ali has grown too much over the past five years. While preparing for his final exams in November, he still wants to be a journalist. “I think journalism can make people change,” he says. “I can bring changes. For me, it’s a good story. “

Banner image: Haron Lenges (back) and Simon Ali, Laikipia County, Kenya. Image Courtesy Backroads Images.

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