Bobi Wine: The People’s President (2022)

Bobi-Win-The-People’s-President-(2022)
Bobi Wine: The People’s President (2022)

Some stories simply seem to be ingrained in us due to us having such a strong connection to them that it’s almost like we can’t live without them. Their importance is just that deep. This brings us to the Cinderella story, which is a major foundation of “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” for countless Western stories. This idea also applies to David and Goliath and while this may be a children’s story, the core is hard to escape, especially in films. Film non-fiction is equally obsessed.

In contrast to fictional storytelling, where one knows the plot from the beginning, the realm of documentaries is a drastically different world. The outcome is open-ended, which gives more room for exploration. There is always a chance for things to go awry like Goliath getting missed and, instead of becoming the premise, shifting the focus to David’s choice to even try and sling in the first place.

The same idea is applied in the new documentary titled Bobi Wine: The People’s President.” The cinematography is done by Bwayo, who is also from Uganda, along with director Christopher Sharp. The reasoning behind the documentary is to shed light on how Woodward and Bwayo followed Robert Kyagulanyi’s sudden debut into politics for five years, starting from when the pandemic hit.

Kyagulanyi, known globally as Bobi Wine, is a pop musician who gained popularity from his mix of reggae, dancehall, and Ugandan kiganda. Bobi Wine’s popularity grew further when he jumped into politics by taking a seat at the Ugandan Parliament and later on ended up running for president.

The current president is Yoweri Museveni, an elderly war veteran, who is in his seventies. He fought against the well-known Ugandan tyrant; Idi Amin, only to turn into a self-declared dictator when he lost the presidential elections and started a civil war to gain power. Museveni has been in power in Uganda from the year of 1986.

Barbie, alongside the well-known Wini, gives a first-hand story in this documentary which was crafted by the filmmakers. The way Barbie, a middle-class girl, falls head over heels in love with Wine, a street musician with no family, is straight out of an old Hollywood love tale. This dynamic structure of their relationship is what makes it so fascinating, which is also the reason that Wine would have never been able to move from a pop singer to a politician.

Dictators are, in some concrete ways, products of the media, and there is nothing that unnerves these strongmen more than the prospect of competition from an entertainer who is loved by the masses. This is precisely the issue that Museveni faces with Wine, which is why he uses his army and police to wage war against Wine and his National Unity Platform opposition party. Wine gets arrested and beaten up so badly that it compels him to go into temporary exile while attempting to highlight the kind of power that Museveni is wielding over Uganda.

The documentary tracks the events starting from Wine’s inner circle to the violent clashes between the army and Wine’s supporters. It blends footage from the news both within Uganda as well as abroad, which is a makeshift version of what is done in Marshall Curry’s 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary titled ‘Street Fight.’ This documentary documents the life of current U.S. Senator Cory Booker and his first losing bid to become Newark mayor while being attacked by the sitting Sharpe James while he was running the place in a manner incredibly fortuned thuggish like Museveni.

The disparity that exists between Bobi Wine and ‘Street Fight’ is noteworthy. In the latter, Curry not only narrates the documentary but provides fascinating knowledge on the history of Newark and how the current Mayor James went from being a post-civil rights conservative reformer to abandoning all the ideals associated with that movement.

Sharp and Bwayo allowed Bobi and Barbi to give out information that is probably the most popular way of telling the story in the nonfiction movie world today. Wine does tell that Museveni was once his idol, but this comes out in the documentary which uses a more participatory- observational style, and we miss much of the valuable history of Uganda that is crucial to provide context so that we understand the consequences of taking Museveni on.

However, what Sharp and Bwayo seem to capture in stunning detail is Uganda its will from the high energy of the capital city Kampala to the beautiful Northern country. The wonder of the land clashes with the war using the campaign to presidential ad. The wonder of the land substantiates the violence from the bare name of the civil war to retain power at any price. We are all aware, that the documentary arrives at a time when strongman politics are on the rise everywhere, even in American national politics.

A quick Google search is everyone’s guess of how this election ends, but what the film does is showcase Bobi Wine’s progression as an eloquent defender of democratic principles militarily trying to liberate Uganda from autocratic destruction. This inspiring movie will prompt other people to stand up like Bobi and Barbie, even if “Bobi Wine” is clear about the price of putting a stone in your sling.

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