‘Memories of Love Returned’: A Tribute to Uganda’s Past and the Art of Remembering (NBO Film Festival Review)

Out of a chance encounter with a griot-like photographer in a small, nondescript Ugandan town 23 years ago, filmmaker and actor Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine assembles a soul-stirring exploration of life, memory, and the passage of time. Memories of Love Returned is a love letter to the mundane rhythms of everyday life in rural Uganda, an ode to past generations whose hands reach across time to touch the present, and a complex labyrinth of personal histories.

Photography is one of humankind’s greatest inventions. It stretches a millisecond into an hour, into years, decades, centuries, wrestling time to the ground and holding it still, declaring, “This was. This occurred.” The Ugandan-American Mwine realises this when his car breaks down in Mbirizi town in 2002, where he stumbles upon Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo, a rural photographer whose studio is a pantheon of negatives and prints stretching back to the 1950s. For Mwine, who is himself an acclaimed photographer (his work has been exhibited at the UN), the discovery becomes an epiphany. He reaches back in time and builds a literal bridge between past and present, tracking down the subjects in Ssalongo’s old photos and recreating those images with them. People relive the most precious moments of their lives, even if only for a few seconds.

Memories of Love Returned captures the community’s response: rediscovering lost photos, uncovering family secrets, and revealing on-immediate identities. The large outdoor exhibition of Ssalongo’s photos becomes a focal point where the community can relieve the past, and the large, fragmented family of Ssalongo can heal.

When the documentary turns its gaze toward Ssalongoe’s personal life, we’re ushered into a rich and complex life marked by his warring multiple wives, deep-seated family tensions, and dozens of children. In an interview with Deadline, Mwine joked that Ssalongo’s complex household could have easily turned the film into The Real Housewives of Mbirizi. At one point, Mwine finds himself entangled in the web of Kibaate’s relationships when he organizes a family gathering.

Ssalongo’s photographs are windows into the past, and not just any past, but one steeped in love and nostalgia: a couple on their wedding day, friends hanging out over a tipple, lovers sharing a moment, graduations, family portraits, just people celebrating various precious moments in their lives. In these images, we glimpse a Uganda that has changed profoundly over time. Women in miniskirts move freely. Same-gender relationships, platonic or otherwise, publicly share moments of intimacy. One subject recalls how, under Idi Amin’s regime in the 1970s, women in miniskirts were burned alive, and in the present Ugandan, LGBTQ+ communities face imprisonment for existing.

Mwine’s direction is a showcase in immersive storytelling, weaving together his own recollections, rough archival footage, and interviews into an elegant, complex and deeply moving film.

His use of music is deliberate and poetic. It doesn’t just set the tone, it becomes a time-traveling device, transporting us into the world of each photograph. When frames fill with women in afros and miniskirts holding bottles of waragi, Les Wanyika’s Sina Makosa plays, and suddenly we’re right there in the 1980s, swaying to Issa Juma’s thick baritone. The film uses music to differentiate eras: rich, textured melodies accompany archival footage, while present-day ssequences are marked by silence or minimal sound, letting voices and emotion to carry the weight.

Memories of Love Returned becomes an intricate meditation on time, mortality, and memory. Mwine reflects that most of Ssalongo’s subjects have since passed, and he himself has faced a health scare. The urgency of restoring and sharing these images becomes clear. “Photography is a stark reminder of our fragility,” he says. “We must be aware of time, because it will eventually take its toll.” The making of this film, therefore, becomes Mwine’s way of honouring his own roots, and creating and recreating memories that future generations can one day look at and find comfort in.

In these moments of introspection, Mwine films rural Uganda as though he wants to etch it permanently into memory, to carve it into stone, or wear it like a cherished talisman. The camera lingers over the stillness of green mountains, and on the rivers and lakes winding through valleys.

Memories of Love Returned is a testament to the power of memory, and a moving reminder of what it means to honour a legacy, to hold time still, and to find love in what remains.

Memories of Love Returned screened at the 2025 NBO Film Festival that ran from 16-26 October. You can now catch it at Unseen Cinema until 30 November.

Check out our full coverage of the 2025 NBO Film Festival here.

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