A documentary about Ugandan singer-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has received a nomination for the 2024 Oscar awards.
“Bobi Wine: The People”s President” was nominated alongside “The Eternal Memory”, “Four Daughters,” “To Kill a Tiger” and “20 Days in Mariupol” under the Best Documentary Feature Film category.
The nomination comes 11 days after the documentary won the “Audience Choice Award” at the esteemed Cinema Eye Honors 2024 Awards held on January 12, at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem.
“It would help us to convince those that fund the regime in Uganda to reconsider, or at least to put stringent conditions, including respect for human rights and respect for democracy,” he said.
Kyagulanyi, a Ugandan opposition leader, a former member of Parliament, activist and a popular musician, ran in the country’s 2021 presidential elections.
Yoweri Museveni, 78, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, won a sixth presidential term in 2021.
While he is beloved by many Ugandans who credit him with bringing relative stability to the country, many others see him as an authoritarian who depends on the security forces to stay in power.
Kyagulanyi said he hopes the nomination, which brings the voice of Uganda’s opposition to the Oscars awards, one of the most prestigious film platforms in the world, “will have an impact and create more awareness of our struggle in Uganda”.
“We hope to elevate our voice further, and we hope to ask the world to join our hope and our desperate cry for freedom, for human rights and for democracy in Uganda,” he said.
Henry Okello Oryem, Uganda's minister for Foreign Affairs, downplayed the nomination.
“My only comment is that Western countries are so gullible to everything and anything that anybody that talks negatively against the government, the government of the day, institutions,” he said.
Oryem said governments in Western countries support people who are against elected or legal institutions and whatever those groups say, even the most misleading of information, is accepted as truth.
“The Western countries and their viewers are so gullible to these stories, so I wish him all the very best, he said in reference to Bobi Wine. “But for us in Uganda, the facts speak for itself,” he added.
The minister said the documentary will not have any impact on the government. He said Uganda’s government will counter it by action, and noted “in the last one week we had the most successful back-to-back summits that could be held in in any part of Africa, attended by delegates from all over the world.”
Uganda hosted the Non-Aligned Movement Summit and the Group of 77 nations summit over the past week. Yet less than a month ago, he said, “there were stories, there were allegations and travel advisories being issued by Western governments that tourists and investors should not come to Uganda.”
The United States, Canada and other governments have warned citizens to be cautious in traveling to Uganda because of the risk of terrorist attacks, especially in border areas, and crime. In addition, they have warned about possible attacks on individuals because of Uganda’s strict anti-homosexuality law.
“It was all lies, fabricated, and then misleading because the attendance of the international community and this summit was beyond imagination,” Oryem said.
“Bobi Wine: The People”s President” premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation at the 2022 Venice Film Festival in September 2022, where it was sold to National Geographic before making its U.S. premiere at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival.
The film, directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2022 Hamptons International Film Festival.
