Something Necessary

Something Necessary Something Necessary opened in cinemas on Thursday 24th January 2013 to a lot of excitement. I was at the premier that was at The Junction and you could feel the anticipation in the air. There was a red carpet, cameras flashing, dressed up ladies and gents and an after party at the Wine Bar and Mercury both at The Junction. The premier was open to members of the public at just Kshs 450 which is a pretty good deal as most premiers are overpriced. So if you weren’t there, I don’t know where you were! [taq_review] The film is directed by well-known Kenyan Director, Judy Kibinge and produced by Ginger Ink Films and One Fine Day Films who produced Soul Boy and Nairobi Half Life. It tells the story of Anne (played by Susan Wanjiru) and Joseph (played by Walter Lagat). Anne is a survivor of the post-election violence (PEV) that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008. Her husband is murdered, her son is in a coma and she herself is hospitalized after a gang of youths breaks into their home at the height of the PEV. Joseph is a perpetrator of the PEV and was one of the youths that broke into Anne’s home. Fate unites the two characters when Anne begins to rebuild her home and Joseph is hired as a casual labourer by the Contractor working on Anne’s house. Read more  no next  page Page 2 In 2007, ethnic and political tensions in Kenya came to a head when public election votes believed to be rigged incited rioting and chaos that resulted in the deaths of over a thousand people and the displacement of even more. So often, when we hear about African stories either in cinema or on the news, the focus is on the hows and the whys of civil unrest, the horrors and atrocities so often thought of as basically synonymous with the continent. But it’s the aftermath of these kinds of realities, the unsettling quiet after the storm, that director Judy Kibinge keenly explores in her latest feature, Something Necessary. It begins with disturbing, real video footage of the carnage that occurred after the elections, but the film opts instead to tell the quiet story of one woman’s struggle to move on from the past. Anne (Susan Wanjiru), a nurse and mother who lives with her family on an isolated farm called ‘The Haven’, awakens from a coma to find that her once idyllic life will never be the same. A victim of physical and sexual violence at the hands of a gang of thugs during the post-election violence, we learn that her husband is dead at the hands of the thugs, her son in a coma, and her picturesque farm has been burned to ashes. Sinking in medical debt, haunted by eerie glimpses of her dead husband, and still struggling to deal with the memories of that horrible night, Anne resolves to renovate her farm despite the protests of friends and family,…