The Producers

Nima Shirali — Director

Nima Shirali has a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Stockholm and graduated with the short Farewell Riegelmann (2008) from New York Film Academy. Katwe is his first feature.

Making The Film

Director's Statement

I’m a child of political immigrants from Iran living in Sweden. Through family stories and experience I have learnt to always be grounded with the grassroots people; that the reality and perspective of working class and poor people is the truth of any society. In my work I am dedicated to this principle.

The salt workers of Katwe have been witnesses to political forces, both external and internal, that come to their community in order to profit from it, and who all leave as soon as they have succeeded or failed in their pursuits. This film is about those who are left behind, to labour, to wait, and to live their lives day to day struggling to not fail getting something to eat. It's about their hopes and dreams and their views of the larger forces that want to shape their lives, both past and present. As such, it is an attempt to tell history from below through the perspectives of the indigenous and grassroots people whose voices, although marginalised, radiate with deep knowledge and truth. And I feel it is a perspective that is ever more urgent during these dangerous times when we are faced with a monopoly oligarch threat to dominate world politics while pretending that they represent the working class.

— Nima Shirali, Director