Bobi Wine on ‘The People’s President’s’ Oscar nomination: ‘It’s a campaign for life’

Joyce Eng
·3 min read
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“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” has already won the IDA Documentary Award and is nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, but no one involved with the film is focused on bringing home hardware.

“For us, it interestingly doesn’t feel like a campaign for Oscar,” Bobi Wine said Thursday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

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“Are we campaigning?” quipped his wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi, who joined him on the panel alongside director and producer Christopher Sharp, director and cinematographer Moses Bwayo, and producer John Battsek.

“For us, it’s a campaign for life,” Wine continued. “For us, this is a lifeline. Every opportunity we get to show the situation in Uganda, we are extending [life] because we know, first and foremost, the energy and the sustainability of the regime comes from their ability to hide. The more Americans see this film, the more Europeans see this film, the more attention comes to our homes, and therefore the closer the message gets to their leaders … and therefore the more possible it is for those leaders to reverse the policies on Uganda.”

The documentary, which filmed for more than six years and premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, follows the presidential campaign of Wine, a popular Ugandan singer, as he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Ugandan autocrat Yoweri Museveni, who has now been in power for 38 years.

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More than the awards recognition, the visibility of “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” means the most to the team as every piece of attention it gets “continues to highlight the struggle back in Ugandan and for democracy around the world,” Bwayo said. “This is a current story. This has not stopped. It is still ongoing.”

Though the regime is still in place, the film’s impact has already been felt in Uganda. “There some shame to the government,” Kyagulanyi noted. “When they are abducting or taking someone away, these days they wait for the dark, they make sure there is no camera recording around. They use more tactics. They are no longer coming in broad daylight and grabbing someone. … I know they are waiting for the lights and cameras to die down.”

“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+. Bwayo thank National Geographic for picking up the film and “giving us a platform” to share their story. “We didn’t set out to make an award-winning film. We set out to document what was happening,” he stated. “We receive this with gratitude and humility. It’s really humbling to be here today and to see where the film has gotten. Honestly, we never thought we’d get to this point. We are humbled by this attention, by the documentary branch, and all the support that is coming from the academy members, from the academy itself. Not so many times an African story gets nominated. It’s a rarity. We are really honored to be here. It’s a blessing honestly.”

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