TKenya's Laikipia Plateau is a wildlife sanctuary and popular safari destination, home to all five of Africa's animals. The simmering local conflict between indigenous pastoralist communities and long-standing white farmers has so far received little attention from the international community. But The Battle of Laikipia, shot by two veteran filmmakers, award-winning Kenyan documentary director Peter Murimi and short film Oscar-nominated Greek director Daphne Matiaraki, walks a tightrope. While showing the delicate balance of conflict. In recent years, the climate crisis has increased violence.
“While making the film, I was struck by the fact that people sharing the same landscape hardly knew each other and didn't really understand each other,” says Machiaraki. “A lack of empathy, fear, and sometimes a refusal to recognize the historical context is why this conflict has escalated to the extent it has. Climate change is bringing to the surface issues that have been swept under the rug for decades. Masu.”
In their search for strong characters, Murimi says Laikipia residents were initially suspicious of their motives. “When someone hears you talking to the enemy, it creates a lot of problems,” he says. Local nomadic communities have used ancient grazing routes across Laikipia for centuries, but when white farmers gained access to large tracts of land in the early 20th century, the two groups came into conflict. Now it looks like this.
The climate crisis is forcing pastoralists, who are increasingly in dire need of grass for their cattle, to land that has been owned by white farmers for generations, increasing risk. There is. A documentary shows how landowners who also depend on Laikipia for their cattle struggle to convince pastoralists that they too are Kenyans and that Kenya is the country they have known all their lives. It's reflected.
Machiaraki came up with the idea for the film about 20 years ago while living in Kenya and doing an internship with UNEP. She said she knew from the beginning that she couldn't make the film alone, which is why she asked Murimi to be his co-director. The first scene she shot in 2017 shows the film's powerful character Maria Dodds having tea with guests when suddenly gunshots are heard on the farm.
“It's always been a challenge to film on both sides of a conflict, remain neutral, and continue to foster trust and intimacy while maintaining ethical boundaries,” says Machiaraki. “We experienced people being scared, devastated, angry, questioning themselves, and then making peace.”
The main characters of the film are Simeon, a Samburu cattle herder, and three white landowners who live nearby. Simeon, who speaks Samburu, is often depicted spending time with his family in modest surroundings. In the Samburu language, “Nkishon'' means life and is derived from the word “Ngishu'', which means cow. “Cows are life for us,” Simeon says in the film. “We live on the milk, soup, blood, and sometimes meat that the cows give us. When Samburu is born, we are given a cow. And when we die, we are buried in the cow's hide.”
The lifestyle of pastoralists is contrasted with that of white farmers, who speak English and Swahili and live in more privileged households. In one scene at the beginning of the film, a rancher warns a young black rancher to leave his property. Some farmers use electric fences to keep out pastoralists, but many accept that managing large tracts of land is difficult. “This farm actually dates back to the time of our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. You feel like you're part of the whole jigsaw,” Dodds explains. The film depicts the funeral of Dodd, who died of cancer in 2021.
The complex legacy of British colonialism remains unresolved within Kenya, and the government is reluctant to find solutions. Kenya's independence in 1963 did little to change that situation, and land ownership remained unchanged for generations. Television news shows recent acts of violence in which pastoralists are often referred to as “bandits.” “Being semi-nomadic should not be a crime,” Simeon says at the end of the film. Violence is evident on both sides. A herder is found dead. A farmer discovers that his office has been broken into.
Filming began in 2017 and lasted five years. During that time, there was a three-year drought, which made making the film a logistical challenge. “It's very remote, sparsely populated and sometimes you have to walk long distances. You have to sleep on the floor, on goat skins or cow skins. It was very humbling to receive this,” says Murimi. His previous film was the 2020 feature documentary “I Am Samuel,” about a gay man and his boyfriend.
Murimi says the biggest hurdle in filming was “unconscious bias.” “Sometimes this unconscious bias affects our work. In fact, when we were making this film together, we had to really challenge each other. And it was very I found it to be a rewarding process.”
“We also learned a lot about ourselves, because sometimes people have this worldview and think that's the only way the world works,” he says. “I think the beauty of this project is that it challenges the perceptions people have, but sometimes you have to look the other side to understand it. The world is more than we think. It's much broader. So I think that was the biggest challenge because we had to face reality and accept that sometimes we were wrong.”
