NBO Film Festival #7 ended in Nairobi on 25 October, where the Rwandan director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo's Ben'Imana won the Fiction Feature Jury Prize. The movie marked the opening of this year's festival.
The Ugandan filmmaker Patience Nitumwesiga's The Woman Who Poked the Leopard won the first Nick Wambugu Documentary Award. Zimbabwean filmmaker Naishe Nyamubaya's God Sleeps on Sundays won the Short Film Jury Prize. Special mention awards went to Lady by Olive Nwosu and Crocodile, both from Nigeria, as well as to The Big Sad Nairobi 2 from Kenya. The Vanguard Prize was posthumously awarded to Yahya Chavanga.
In terms of tangible benefits for producers, there were more at the NBO Project Showcase, where six awards were handed out to four projects that are currently in development. The project by Tony Koros called Tithes and Offerings, produced by Toni Kamau and Louise Kamwangi, received three awards: a fiction distribution award of US$1,500 worth of services provided by Bigger Motion, a US$1,924.41 development grant from Same But Different, and US$3,848.82 of lighting and grip equipment from Kenya Grips and Sparks.
The second project to receive an award is Second Term, developed by Joan Njeri and Karanja Ng'endo; they received US$2,500 worth of post-production services from Africa Post Office. The third award-winning project was a documentary called Amebakisha, by Valentine Zikki, which won the non-fiction distribution award provided by Bigger Motion.
The awards' monetary value is modest, and most assistance is provided in-kind. However, for projects from Eastern Africa, these include post-production, equipment, and distribution.
