Kenya’s ‘Truck Mama’, Uganda’s ‘Mad Bounty and the Midnight Gun’ and More East African Projects Head to the 2025 Red Sea Film Festival and the Souk Project Market

From 4-13 December, all roads lead to the Red Sea International Film Festival 2025 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as the world gathers for one of the final major festivals of the year.

Kenyan documentary Truck Mama, directed by Zippy Nyaruri, will premiere in competition as one of 16 feature films selected from Africa, Asia and the Arab world. Truck Mama follows a single mother and truck driver in Kenya navigating dangerous roads to provide for her family. In a male-dominated industry, she balances long hauls, calls to her children and daily challenges.

Truck Mama, whose journey began in 2011 at the now seemingly inactive Lola Kenya Screen film forum, has undergone a long and patient development process supported by a series of labs, film funds and markets including the Durban Film Mart, Docubox, IDFA Forum, Hot Docs-Blue Ice Docs Fund and the Red Sea Film Foundation.

Also premiering in competition from East Africa is Barni, the debut feature from Somali filmmaker Mohammed Sheikh. The film follows a nine-year-old girl who goes missing after a wedding celebration in a small Somali village, prompting her older sister and her friends to embark on a courageous journey to the city in search of her.

In the Red Sea Shorts Competition, Kenyan short Owadwa (Our Brother) is among 11 films drawn from the qualifying territories of Asia and Africa. Featuring six female directors and five world premieres, the selection spans scripted, documentary and hybrid storytelling and engages with themes of emigration, mental illness, alienation and historical reckoning.

Directed by Shandra Daisy Apondi (Memory of Princess Mumbi), Owadwa follows a family caught between crisis and celebration. As they prepare for a wedding amid rising tensions, an unexpected incident exposes long-buried struggles and sacrifices.

Also in the shorts category, Nsala (Mickael-Sltan Mbanza, the Democratic Republic of Congo) blends Belgian colonial archives with present-day footage to reveal the human side of a dehumanising economic machine, confronting the legacy of exploitation and the silent trauma that persists in bodies and landscapes marked by history.

The Red Sea Film Festival also presents the Red Sea Souk, the market arm of the festival that supports international co-productions and the financing of new projects. Running from 6-10 December, this year’s Souk features 15 African projects comprising both feature films and series, marking a significant milestone for African representation. These were selected from 1900 applications received across the Red Sea Souk and Red Sea Labs from the festival’s focus regions of the Arab world, Asia and Africa. In total, the Souk will present 40 feature films and series projects, all of which will compete for the Red Sea Souk Awards offered by the Red Sea Fund and award partners. These awards offer crucial financial support at various stages of a project’s lifecycle, including development, production, and post-production, as well as dedicated support for projects within the Lodge and SeriesLab.

East African projects at the Souk 2025 include:

Projects-in-Development and Production

Kenyan feature Nkanai, the debut fiction from director Bruno Tanya and producer Audrey Tanya, follows Samburu’s first female warrior who rejects exile after a devastating injury leaves her paralysed. With only a haunted tracker by her side, she braves northern Kenya’s ruthless bandits, betrayal, and unforgiving terrain to reclaim her dignity and home.

Mohamed Kordofani’s new fiction project About Love and September Laws (Sudan, France, Germany, Sweden) is set in 1983 Sudan where, as Sharia Law is enforced, a doctor, a translator, and an African-American journalist become entangled in love and resistance amid a nation’s political upheaval.

In Ibrahim Mursal’s debut fiction Price of Evil (Sudan, Norway), a Norwegian-Sudanese man must decide the punishment for his grandfather’s murderer according to Sudanese law: prison, forgiveness or the death penalty, a choice that will have enormous consequences for himself and his family.

Works-in-Progress

Benimana (Rwanda, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Norway) from Rwandan director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo follows a survivor of the Tutsi genocide working for reconciliation who must face her old demons when her daughter unexpectedly gets pregnant. 

SeriesLab Projects

Kenyan comedy series Money Town, directed by Tony Koros and produced by Toni Kamau, follows the chaos that erupts when a tech millionaire showers free money on a humble village once held together by cups of borrowed sugar. As greed, ambition and suspicion spread, only shrewd but illiterate Lel can keep the madness from boiling over.

Uganda’s Mad Bounty and the Midnight Gun, a Western written by Talemwa Pius and Tusabe Ivan, is set in 1885 Western Uganda. It follows an outlaw on the hunt for the British commander who killed his mother, only to uncover a native weapon of raw power. To claim it, he must outwit the British and rival factions.

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