Der Kampf um den heiligen Baum

The Battle of the Sacred Tree

Watching Wanjiru Kinyanjui's feature film "Der Kampf um den heiligen Baum" (The Battle of the Sacred Tree"), one would never guess that it was the director’s graduation project from the DFFB. It displays a wit and self-assurance rarely seen in student films. It was also shot far from Berlin, in a Kenyan village with Kenyan actors. The film was based on a short story by the best-selling author Barbara Kimenye. The dialogue alternates between English and Kiswahili, and the soundtrack is by a Senegalese musician called Mamadou Mbaye.

Protagonist Mumbi leaves Nairobi and her abusive husband for her ancestral village. There she clashes with a Christian women's group, whose members are determined to eradicate every last trace of pre-colonial beliefs. They are particularly vexed by a magnificent tree, because the villagers believe it possesses supernatural powers. A cunning mayor and an amorous tailor leap to Mumbi's defence, and in the end it is ants that engineer what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, the doyen of Kenyan literature, once referred to as "Decolonising the Mind".

Source: 73. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)