Cinema
Battle of the Sacred Tree
Wanjiru Kinyanjui · 1995
Synopsis
Mumbi leaves Nairobi and a husband who beats her to return with her daughter to her native village in Kikuyu country, where her father is a healer of the old school. Life there revolves around a sacred tree to which the inhabitants attribute supernatural powers. The association of Christian women, determined to drive out whatever remains of pre-colonial beliefs, attacks the village bar, the old man's medicine and the tree, which it wants to cut down. Mumbi opposes this, supported by a cunning mayor and a tailor in love with her.
Context
Adapted from a short story by Barbara Kimenye, the film was produced by Birne-Film and the Berlin school with Flamingo Films in Paris and two German channels; the cinematography is by François Kotlarski, the music by the Senegalese Mamadou Mbaye. Shown at Fespaco and in Montreal in 1995, and awarded a prize in Milan by the Catholic Office for Cinema, it returned to screens in 2023, in a Berlinale programme devoted to Black filmmakers in Germany, then in London in 2024. The Berlin catalogue finds in it a spirit and a confidence rare for a student's work.
Who it is for
For those who want to see a village comedy in which the quarrel between the church and the old beliefs is played out at the foot of a venerated tree.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize in Milan in 1995, it was rediscovered in Europe by the Berlinale in 2023 and screened in London the following year.
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