TUG OF WAR
VUTA  N'KUVUTE

Amil Shivji

Tanzania, South Africa, Germany, Qatar  2021, 90 minutes, color
Feature film

Swahili and English, with English subtitles 

TUESDAY 24. OCTOBER 2024 | 20H15

MOVIE 2 | MOVIEMENTO

A coming-of-age political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar. Denge, a young freedom fighter meets Yasmin, an Indian-Zanzibari woman in the middle of the night as she is on her way to be married. Passion and revolution escalate. 

A young revolutionary and a runaway bride struggle for forbidden freedoms, in Amil Shivji’s adaptation of Adam Shafi’s Swahili novel.  In this adaptation of Adam Shafi’s award-winning Swahili novel, set in 1950s Zanzibar, a romance is buffeted by the harsh waves of British rule and the local militant struggle for liberation. On the shores of the centuries-old trade port in the Indian Ocean’s “Spice Islands” — under British protectorate control and overseen by the Sultan of Oman — Denge, a young Mswahili revolutionary, fights for a free Zanzibar. 

Amil Shivji is based in Tanzania, his homeland, as a filmmaker and believes in using images to challenge the powers that be, in particular deconstructing urban facades of development and emphasizing the strength and struggles of marginalized communities. He has an MFA from York University and is a Berlinale Talent Alumni. His fiction films have participated in prestigious festivals across the globe. The last fiction feature, Vuta N’Kuvute (Tug of War) is a story of love and resistance set in British colonial Zanzibar, 1950s and premiered at TIFF’21, won the Oumarou Ganda Prize at FESPACO’21, special Jury prize in Seattle, Golden Tanit in Carthage and is Tanzania’s second ever submission to the Oscars®. His latest documentary The Empty Grave premiered at Berlinale ’24 and has played in over fifty cinemas in Germany. 

Filmstill © Tug of War