I’m a late comer to the Nairobi Half Life fan fest, and wonder what took me so long. In a span of an hour, forty minutes, I was shocked, disgusted, saddened, disappointed, overwhelmed, and hopeful in different measure.

The movie is about Mwas (award winner Joseph Wairimu), a young man from rural Kenya who has big dreams to make it as an actor in Nairobi. But he’s off to a bad start thanks to his encounters with hustlers like the actor with a travelling theatre troupe who promises and fails to be his agent in Nairobi for Sh. 500, and the muggers who rob him just as he’s fresh off the bus. He ends up in jail after failing to run away fast enough from the kanjo (City Council workers) chasing after hawkers. From there, he eventually gets out, and the story is one about him surviving Nairobi’s mean streets, with his new-found friends like Oti (Olwenya Maina) and Amina (Nancy Karanja). There’s a toilet scene in the jail that turns the stomach just to think about it. How Mwas gets out of jail looking relatively clean is
also rather unrealistic.

But this film’s strength is in allowing the audience to meet young Kenyans, and to see that really, many people just want the same things: to live dignified, decent lives. But when people have to struggle even for that, they are forced to make decisions that are violent and destructive. One wonderful gift the film gives the audience is allowing them to view the characters as more than one-dimensional. Amina is not just a prostitute. She’s a young woman who wants to be a beautician, and who appreciates it when someone values her for other than her body. Mwas is a dreamer with street smarts, who smoothly switches between life in Eastlands and Westlands.

The movie may be German-funded but it’s got some serious Kenyan talent.Director David ‘Tosh’ Gitonga has worked on films like The First Grader. Billy Kahora, the writing supervisor, was nominated for the 2012 Caine Prize, a literary award. Nancy Wanjiku Karanja and Olwenya Main are no strangers to local audiences. They’ve each been in the MTV production Shuga. Olwenya has appeared on TV shows like Mali while Nancy has been in Siri. Joseph, the lead actor, won a best actor award in Durban, and the movie is seeking nomination for an award in the 2013 Foreign Language Film category.

Let’s just hope the movie finds enough fans in Hollywood to get that Oscar. But even if it doesn't, it's worth watching.