Country or Family: Softie Film Review

Boniface Mwangi is no stranger to the Kenyan public. He’s a photojournalist turned political activist that has been at the forefront of the Kenyan civil space for the last decade. Softie tells that story over 7 years.

I first met Boniface as a photojournalist exhibiting pictures he captured during the post-election violence. It was pretty difficult to see but led to important conversations around PEV. Next I met him at PAWA 254 where he was the Executive Director and even attended a few protests.

Softie begins with one of the more infamous protests from Boniface’s career – the MPigs one that consisted of pigs smeared in blood and released outside Parliament. We get an up close view of the protest starting with Boniface procuring the blood and the pigs and then the chaos that ensues when the police inevitably show up to teargas and beat protesters.

Sam Soko, the Director of Softie, shared that the intention wasn’t a documentary but a 5 to 30 minute how to protest guide video. However, as he kept shooting, he realized he had something special as the intimate access into Boniface’s personal life helped paint a picture of a bigger story.

Softie is a sheng word that means a weak/soft person. Boniface was a small kid growing up and got mocked for being weak. It’s almost hilarious considering how fiery he grew up to be. He grew up in poverty with his mother who was a single mom. He takes his family to see the house, that is more of a shack, where he grew up. His experiences growing up definitely affected his outlook as he has a deep understanding of poverty and how politics keep the poor in the poverty cycle.

Boniface managed to escape poverty and got into journalism. The 2007 post-election violence saw him as a photojournalist on the ground capturing the horrors of this violence. His editor refused to print the pictures so Boniface went ahead and put up an exhibition of them. It’s clear that was a life-changing experience and has been the driver for much of his activism.

We get to see the behind the scenes of his Starehe MP campaign in 2017. He tried to run a clean campaign but it’s evident from the beginning that a lot of Kenyans are only interested in candidates who are willing to bribe them. It’s brutally truthful in its depiction of the ugliness of Kenyan politics as Njeri and the kids end up going into hiding in the US for 8 months due to death threats. Boniface doesn’t win and there’s a sadness there from whether Kenya really can elect a candidate who runs an issue based clean campaign.

The documentary film does a great job of showing the sacrifices activists make and the toll those sacrifices take on their families. It’s also a sobering reminder of the terrible losses Kenyans have suffered in the hands of politicians.

The film premiered in competition at Sundance, where it won a well-deserved prize for editing. Softie has subsequently played the digital editions of CPH:DOX and Hot Docs, as well as received a digital release in the U.S. this week, with PBS’s documentary outlet POV.

Softie also won Best Film at the Encounters International Documentary Festival and Best Documentary at the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) 2020. The DIFF win means that Softie now qualifies for consideration for the Oscar documentary shortlist for the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony in 2021.

In the beginning, Boniface believes country comes before family as a working country means a great family life. He’s even adamant that he’s ready to die for the country, much to the despair of his wife, Njeri. In the end, Boniface struggles with whether country should come before family and what that means for him and his family’s future. It’s a question worth pondering. For all of us. What should we give our country and is it even worth it?