Wanuri Kahiu takes first Kenyan Sci-Fi short to Sundance

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Kenyan Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu takes her sci-fi short Pumzi, the first-ever Kenyan Sci-Fi to Sundance this year.

Pumzi “started off as a small script about what kind of world we would have to be if we had to buy fresh air,” writer/director Wanuri Kahiu told Wired.com in a Skype interview. The movie was made with grant money from Focus Features’ #Africa First short film program, the Goethe Institut, and the Changamoto arts fund. Pumzi will share the screen with two other films as part of Sundance’s New #African Cinema program.

This special program presents three films that reflect a new wave of African cinema. South African filmmaker #Jenna Bass draws from ancient mythological storytelling traditions to create a kind of historical magical realism in relating a modern-day tale of warfare in Zimbabwe in her film #The Tunnel.

Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu creates a brightly original science-fiction vision in her film Pumzi, a story of a botanist who risks everything to nurture a plant 35 years after the “Water War.” And Senegalese filmmaker #Dyana Gaye draws from the fifties- and sixties-style French musicals to breathe fresh air into Saint Louis Blues, a buoyant road-trip tale set in the clogged urban streets and dusty roads of Senegal.

Bob Hensen