Bobi Wine: The People’s President - Oscar-shortlisted doc returning to cinemas

[BluBonnet]

Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Bobi Wine: The People’s President’ To Return To Select Cinemas for MLK Weekend: “Perfect Opportunity” To Highlight Wine’s “Inspiring Fight For Freedom”

National Geographic Documentary Films is returning its Oscar-shortlisted documentary Bobi Wine: The People’s President to select cinemas over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

The film directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp will play at IFC Center in New York, the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, CA, and San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre from Friday through Sunday, overlapping with part of the nomination voting period for the 96th Academy Awards. On Tuesday, Bwayo and Sharp earned DGA Awards nominations for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Directing for their film, which centers on Ugandan pop star Bobi Wine, who dared to run for president against his country’s dictator, Gen. Yoweri Museveni.

Bobi Wine: The People’s President recently won the IDA Documentary Award for Best Documentary Feature and has earned top prizes at the Hamptons International Film Festival and Independent Film Festival of Boston. It is nominated for three awards at this Friday’s Cinema Eye Honors in New York. Wine has also been named to the Cinema Eye Honors’ Unforgettables list of the year’s most remarkable figures in documentary film.

“Born in the slums of Kampala, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, famously known as Bobi Wine, is a musician turned politician who is the current leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP) and the People Power Movement,” notes a release about the film. “He has campaigned for hospital sanitization, malaria prevention, refugees’ rights and children’s education. His songs are known as peaceful protests and edutainment (a mix between education and entertainment), focusing on the struggles of Uganda’s underprivileged and low-income earners and calling upon young people to join politics and change their country’s destiny.”

At great risk to his life, Wine has opposed Gen. Museveni, ruler of Uganda since the 1980s. Museveni and his son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, face potential charges from the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.

[BluBonnet]

Oscar nominated for Best Documentary

[sextonseven]

I watched it today--very good. It might be the only one of the nominated documentaries I see before the awards next month.