Filmmaker contemplates a world without water and air

Wanuri Kahiu once envisioned a world without water. As she imagined the resultant chaos, a movie idea formed in her mind.

The award-winning filmmaker, for whom movie making is a way of life, penned the script for a short film to portray a world without water and air. She called it Pumzi.

“The film started as a joke as a friend and I looked at the possibility of living in a place where we paid for air,” she said.

A science fiction movie, Pumzi is set 35 years after World War III. It is set for release next month, by which time, going by the current electricity and water rationing in the country, it will look more real than fictional.

“When I was writing it, it seemed like something that would happen years from now but it’s ironic that we are all suffering because we have destroyed nature. I am glad the movie is done so that people can see where we might be headed if we continue like this,” Wanuri said.

“Wangari Maathai has been talking about this issue for years and we never heed her advice so I am not here to tell people to conserve the environment alone, I am showing them what will happen if we don’t. I show a land where people recycle their own water to survive.”

The script

Pumzi is set to be released on October 21 at the Kenya International Film Festival.

It took Wanuri two years to come up with the script and a fortnight to shoot it. It follows the story of Asha who seeks to reclaim the world from all the destruction.

Asha is a curator at a virtual natural history museum in the Maitu Community located in East Africa. The land is toxic and barely habitable. One day she receives a sample of soil that is not toxic and she decides to use it to plant a seed in her possession.

Asha and her fellow humans live in an enclosed place and anyone who wants to go outside must apply for a visa. She is denied one and decides to break out to plant the seed.

Pumzi was shot in South Africa on a low budget and does not feature any Kenyan actors.

Fly actors

“I had $25,000 (Sh1.9 million) and could not afford to fly the actors I needed to use in the film and I settled on those from southern Africa,” she said.
The 29-year-old got the grant to make the film from the Goethe Institut, Focus Features and Changamoto Fund.

“I was introduced to the producers of the film, Focus Features, and they were passionate about the project, profoundly knowledgeable about sci-fi and exceptionally generous with their expertise and resources,” she said.