Two days before the BAFTAs, in a quiet drawing room of the Soho Hotel, in London, I met with one of Uganda’s biggest pop stars, the pacifist politician Bobi Wine. He was accompanied by his wife, Barbie Kyagulanyi, and the first-time director Christopher Sharp, whose documentary, Bobi Wine: The People’s President, has been nominated for best documentary feature in this year’s Academy Awards.
Filmed in Uganda over five years, it tells the compelling story of how an orphan who talks with pride of his upbringing “in the ghetto” became a charismatic musician worshipped across the African continent.
After becoming increasingly disturbed by his country’s atrocious human-rights record, he turned to politics and won a seat in parliament in 2017. The film culminates with Wine taking on President Yoweri Museveni, whose military dictatorship has crippled Uganda for the past 38 years, in the 2021 general election.
Wine walked in like a modern-day Bob Marley, in a leather jacket, a red beret, and smart brown suede loafers. Kyagulanyi was fashionably dressed in an oversize gray wool jacket and pencil skirt. They were tired and jet-lagged, having arrived after a press blitz in Los Angeles. Less than one month ago, the couple said they were under house arrest in Uganda; the military retreated from their home the day the Oscar nominations were announced.
Wine’s mood was somber; the death of Russian activist and lawyer Alexei Navalny had just been announced. “I’m scared,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “Authoritarians read from the same book. This is going to embolden all authoritarians to believe they can do the same thing.”
Bobi Wine: The People’s President was directed by two equally invested men who were born and brought up in Uganda. Kampala-born Sharp, best known as the co-founder of the Rug Company with his wife, Suzanne Sharp, drove and funded the project. A longtime fan of Wine’s music, Sharp first met him when he performed at Sharp’s daughter’s wedding, in Malta. Two weeks later, Sharp flew to Uganda and proposed the idea of the film; Wine immediately agreed. The second director is the Ugandan cinematographer and filmmaker Moses Bwayo, who says he now lives in “exile” in Los Angeles after being shot in the face with a rubber bullet fired by police at close range while he was filming the documentary.
Wine’s propulsive Afrobeat tracks score the film. His lyrics become increasingly politicized at rallies, where he is greeted by jubilant crowds like a soccer hero who has just brought home the World Cup. But it’s the constant and soothing presence of Kyagulanyi that centers the film. She met Wine when they were 18 and 20, respectively, and performing in a school play. Often with the couple’s three young children by her side, she navigates attempts on her husband’s life, repeated incarcerations where he is tortured and poisoned, and several incidents of house arrest. “If only I could see him, I would be stronger,” she says at one point, weeping in her car as her husband is abducted by Museveni’s forces.
Wine lost the election—by the Museveni government’s count, he won 35 percent of the votes, and Museveni earned 59 percent. But the process was far from democratic: ballot papers were stolen, supporters were imprisoned, and Internet access was shut down across the country 24 hours before the election and finally restored four days later.
“The Electoral Commission’s records show we won by 54 percent,” says Wine. “It was live on-camera when the head of Uganda Revenue Authority brought a paper and gave it to the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, whispering something in his ear. He appeared visibly confused. It was obvious what was happening. The count he was told to announce was not the one he could see on the ballot paper.”
As the military presence surrounding the couple intensified, film reels had to be smuggled out of the country to avoid detection. This was accomplished with the help of foreign correspondents and journalists, who ferried them on flights to London, where the film was edited. I wondered if Wine had reached out to President Biden for assistance or intervention, given that the U.S. continues to send $100 million in aid to Museveni’s regime each year. What would he say to Biden, if they met? “I would first make sure my jacket is straight, my tie is straight,” Wine says, laughing. “Then I would ask him to put conditions on aid that are respectful to human rights, to democracy, to the rule of law. We’re not asking you to save us—we’re asking you to stop sponsoring the oppression.”
Later that evening, we gathered at Sharp’s Notting Hill home for a reception where Sharp and the film’s Oscar-winning producer, John Battsek, introduced Wine and Kyagulanyi to the guests. There was a heavy weariness in Wine’s voice when he spoke, but when he sang a beautiful ode to his country in his native tongue, his tone became more optimistic. As the couple left, I wondered if Wine would venture another go at the presidency. “If I am alive, I will definitely run again,” he says. Does he even have a shot? Well, an Oscar certainly wouldn’t hurt his chances.
Bobi Wine: The People’s President is now streaming on Disney+
Vassi Chamberlain is a Writer at Large at Air Mail