Nima Shirali: INTERVIEW (SHEFFIELD DOCFEST)

Katwe (2025) is a strikingly beautiful and majestic film, capturing the beauty, humour, dignity, and humanity of the people of Katwe. The film contrasts the vibrancy and spirit of its characters with the harsh injustices of living in a land exploited for its salt mines under a corrupt government. While the audience experiences moments of frustration and anger at these realities, you ultimately leave the film admiring the remarkable individuals who rise above their circumstances — inspired by their resilience, optimism, and unshakable sense of dignity. It’s an awe-inspiring experience that leaves you amazed and longing to be part of the Katwe community.

TNBFC spoke with the director, Nima Shirali, to uncover the journey of making the film, visiting Katwe, and the resilience of its community.

TNBFC: Why Katwe? What drew you to Uganda and this particular community, rather than other parts of the world that are also facing exploitation?

Nima Shirali: I found myself in Uganda through circumstances. I was studying at a school here in Stockholm, Sweden, and they sent us to Uganda. They had this annual travel trip to Uganda with a group of the students, so I found myself there by circumstance. But my teacher, who knew me, and my interest in issues of social justice, issues of workers rights and so on, suggested it. Prior to this, I was a student of anthropology and I did some field work in the North of Sweden in a mining community. The difference in social reality between mining communities like Mount Burrit in Northern Sweden and that of Katwe is vast. But nevertheless, the basic imbalance of power and the injustice was the same in the sense that in the north of Sweden, they wanted to buy up the entire land where the people in Mount Berriet were living in order to make it an industrial zone, to expand the operations of the mine. I was looking at how the company was in fact going about buying the land from the people, which they did by this classic of divide and conquer. They would never do anything, any collective deal. They would just engage with every single household, make them sign agreements of confidentiality not to speak about the price that they were given. So I had that background. And even my father is from the south of Iran, in Khuzestan, where the oil belt is, where all the oil comes. So this issue of having a mineral rich land with vast widespread poverty and injustice has haunted me and been with me my entire life, since my childhood really. So when I found myself in Uganda and my teacher told me that there is this place called Katwe where they have this salt lake, this salt mine I decided to go. But the initial plan wasn't to make a feature documentary. The initial plan was I was going there as part of a school project. But then when I reached Katwe and I stayed there for almost two months, it made me want to come back because of the people I met. Because the likes of Abuoki, likes of Balikenga, and I felt that here I can make something worthwhile, I can make something deeper. So rather than just a student project, I committed and went back and forth for three years and took eight years to finish the film.

TNBFC: Moving to the next question. So I know you both directed the film and you shot the film. When you were filming the film, did you actually already have a sense of what the structure was going to be like or did that sort of reveal itself afterwards or in the editing process?

NS: Firstly, I didn't shoot the entire film by myself. So throughout the years I had colleagues, photographers with me. So in that sense, it was quite collaborative and I worked with really talented people. But to answer your question, after I had returned from my second trip to Uganda I got a clearer picture of what was happening and where I was heading. I work with this project on a very intuitive basis, that's how I worked. So I was engaging with what I saw based on intuition. So questions of form and structure came afterwards, especially in the post production and in the process of editing. But certain things just reveal themselves to you. When you see people working manually by hand in this lake, in a depression, which is the depression, for those who don't know, the temperatures are really hot. The surface of that lake is below sea level, so you have to descend in order to get there. So to work in those conditions where you see people suffering so palpably. And then basically in the middle of the town, you have these old structures, the ruins of the salt factory. So then questions naturally arise. When Bali Kanga in that scene, which is the first scene of him in the film where he's talking about the factory workers, how they worked eight hour shifts. They would come, they would go, another one would take the shift. And then he said there was no hard work, you people just worked eight hours. And here when we think of factory work, we think  it’s quite hard work, but in a context like that of Katwe, factory work in contrast and in relation to the gruesome work of the salt miners becomes something else. So these realities, these contradictions, they reveal themselves to you. It's hard not to recognize them. And then as the years go by, we find archival materials from the days of the factory when it opened and so on and a structure starts revealing itself.

TNBFC: That makes complete sense. What was your first impression when you met these people? In the film, these characters or these people, they really shine. So I'm just curious, what was your impression when you first met them? You first met them the first time you went and then two years afterwards you reconnected with them, is that right?

NS: No, I would go during a three year period. I would go every nine months. All in all, I spent six months in Katwe, divided in four journeys between four trips. The first impression before you see the people is the land, and it is a spectacular land. So Katwe is in the middle of a national park. When you take off from the main road, which is a tarmac road, and then you head to Katwe, it’s a dirt road for 30, 40 kilometers cutting straight to the national park, and you see animals and wildlife. So the first, the first sense that arose to me was where am I? What is this place? Where am I heading? I can tell you a story which I think says a lot about the reality of the people there. When we first got to Katwe with a car, there was a buffalo just outside of town. And it was a lone buffalo. And the car stopped. They said that you see this buffalo because it's alone, it means it's a renegade, it means it's been pushed away from its tribe. So it's dangerous. And we stopped and we watched it and I filmed it. We continued a few days later, on a Sunday, and that same buffalo killed an elder in the community as he was walking to Sunday service just outside where I was living. That elder also was the father of Kananura John Bosco, who is the current mayor of Katwe. I am telling you this story because it says a lot about the precariousness of life there. On a Sunday morning you could be walking to church and a wild animal could kill you. This happens on a recurring basis in Katwe, these attacks by wild animals. There was one year where there was a crocodile that I think took seven or eight people in Katwe. I myself, during the time I was there, went to several burials where the individual, sometimes a youth, had been killed by a hippo, as did one of my friends in the film, also Balikenga. So I think this says a lot about the reality there. Also there's all this conflict which the film really doesn't take up between the wildlife authorities and the people of the community, because there's always this conflict of compensation after someone gets killed. For the wildlife authorities and the state, these animals and the national parks are a source of income to tourism. So there is always this contradiction where many of the people say that they value the lives of the animals more than they value our lives. That buffalo that I saw when I first reached Katwe was a symbol of so many of the contradictions and injustices that plague a community like this. This is not to say that the animals should not be protected.

TNBFC: Yeah. They value tourism more than civilians.

NS: Coming back to your original question, one thing with the people of Katwe, in Uganda in general, is their great sense of humour. They have a fantastic sense of humour and are really easy to get in contact with, really open people. Amongst them, of course, there are some people that make a stronger and lasting impression. Surely Aboki is one of them. And I met Aboki by the end of my first trip. It was a mutual friend of ours that said he knew what I was doing there. He said, there's this one woman you have to meet. She's like no one, no other in the community. I remember the first time I saw her she was with her daughter, Bliss and there was just some sort of radiation about her because she has an immense presence. She really is. It's almost like a mystic quality to our Boki because she, for example, in the beginning of June called me through a direct line. She called me and she was worried. And I said, what's going on? She said, are you all right? See, I'm all right. She said, are you sure? Because I had a dream and I had to see that you're all right. I said, yeah, yeah, no worries. And we continued talking. And a couple of days later, Israel attacked and bombed Iran which is my motherland. So these things happened with her. She has these qualities that are difficult to explain. But quite early on I knew that there's something special about her. You don't meet a person like this twice in your life.

TNBFC: Wow. Very emotional. And sorry for your losses as well. 

NS: Thank you. 

TNBFC: So you met the people there and then did you find that they were super eager to speak to you and connect with you? I mean, you said they were very friendly and very funny people. Do you feel like there was also a bit of time and patience of having to really build people's trust and connect with them or make them feel really comfortable around you? I feel like some of the characters seem so eager to want to speak and express themselves. What was that like for you?

NS: Trust is something that you build in every relationship. An example I always give when discussing these issues is that there's a certain quality to the process of making a documentary and entering another person's life in the sense that if your intentions are not honest or not transparent to the other, they will feel it. So there's no basis for that intimacy and that trust. If your intentions are pure and honest and if you are genuinely interested in what the other has to say, genuinely interested in their lives on a human to human basis the other person will feel it and know it and they will open up. So that's the thing with making a documentary like this, is that the camera is like a portal into the other person's soul. It's a strange thing because it's this digital, technological creation which in many ways is also a barrier. But there are moments where it becomes this portal, which many people may think is just a washed out, dry, formal way of making a documentary. I feel like in certain moments the interview format through the camera becomes almost like a spiritual experience where the person in front of the camera just opens up their hearts and souls. And so if you're genuinely interested in the life of the other, that person will feel it and know it and act accordingly. That's the basis of trust. You approach them with respect, you approach them with humility. But then let me tell you that with some people, that doesn't happen. Zakatra is also a big, big community with over 10,000 people. So of those 10,000 people, you can't reach everyone. I'm certain that there are some people in that community that were more suspicious of me walking around with a camera. I think you have to be honest about your position in a community like this, which in my case is that of an outsider. My perspective is from the outside, and therefore it's limited. What we have shown in Katwe is just one angle. I see our work as a vessel for the lives and the voices of the people depicted. I can't circumvent the fact that it's also a perspective that is mine. You have to be honest about that. You are regarded as an outsider. We have moments in the film where people refer to us as the whites, and that's not even a racial category, it's more of a category of an outsider. These are the people that come and go. Just being honest with the people that you do engage with and that you build relationships with and ensuring that you approach them with respect and dignity.

TNBFC: When you were speaking to the people there and connecting with them, did you find that faith and gratitude were some of the biggest things that helped them keep going or help them endure hardship? There was a great scene within the church with Haj Rajab speaking about how the lakes were in the Quran. There were a lot of religious themes. Do you feel like this was one of the main things that were inspiring the people?

NS: During those six months that I spent there, I went to more funerals in Katwe than I've been anywhere in my entire life, that’s a fact. I remember during one of these funerals I met Balikenga. He said, they can joke, they can laugh, even in a context like that, but it's not disrespectful. It's a way of coping. And he said, Nima, you see how we are. So Uganda is primarily a Christian nation. Every Sunday I would go to churches with my camera because I was curious about the different traditions of the churches. You had the Pentecostal, you had the Catholic, you had the Protestant church and so on. But what I felt on a personal, individual level is that when these people are in such a context where death and violent death, unjust death by disease, death by overworking, death by fishing and being overrun by a hippo is so present, you would go to the church and you would see these people sing and you would understand. You would understand the role. You would understand the spiritual yearning, you would understand the yearning for redemption, you would understand the need for mechanisms of coping. I understood it on a very visceral level when I was there. What was your exact question again?

TNBFC: Do you feel like faith was one of the main things that helped them endure hardship or find the strength to keep going?

NS: I think for me, how I see it, is that the way you endure is through community and getting together. Throughout human history and human societies and cultures, we have collective rituals, we have collective ceremonies. When we bury someone, we don't bury them alone. We bury them as a community. When people go to a mosque, when they go to church, when they go to the holy places, they don't necessarily go by themselves. They go as a community, as a group, where they meet other people. So I think what makes us cope and what guides us through life is these ceremonies, these collective rituals, getting together and reaffirming the community, reaffirming our relationships and ourselves and our senses and our beliefs in ourselves and the people we share our community with. I think religion, churches, mosques and so on are one of those places. But at its heart, it's about getting together. It's about looking each other in the eyes and saying that we're in this together. That's how we cope.

TNBFC: So religion is sort of a way of getting community, I suppose.

NS: Could be part of it, yeah.

TNBFC: So following on from that, I think humour might be the answer to this question, but what was something that stood out to you about the people or something that you feel like still inspires you now about their attitude to life or just the way they are?

NS: Well, their sense of dignity is very present, they are very dignified people. Like you said, the humor is just fantastic. It's so transparent. It's so easy to relate to. Another thing in Uganda, and I hope this comes out in the film, is they put a lot of effort and emphasis at least on speaking poetically and whether this is their culture or some sort of collective unconscious thing. If you think about it, the words that the salt miners use, who are not necessarily your most highly educated people, shows that they're educated in life, which is the deepest thing. They speak philosophically,

from the rhythm of their speech to their punctuations to the very words that they use. That was something that stood out for me a lot. And I think maybe it has to do with when people historically go through hardships, the poetics, politics and the depth of their expressions, whether it's through culture, art or speech, takes another height.

TNBFC: Yeah, I can definitely see that with other cultures as well.

NS: Yes, sure.

TNBFC: So have you shown the film in Uganda or in Katwe?

NS: The people in the film have seen it. But we're waiting to screen it in Uganda because we have a co-producer there. We're waiting to screen it until next year after the election, they want to wait for the election. I think it's in January or February. And then we’ll make a broader screening campaign.

TNBFC: Why? Just because of the current presidency?

NS: During political times, things can get quite sensitive there. And we just don't want the film, if it gets any attention, to be used in any sort of political agenda. The people are quite vulnerable in the film. So we have to, especially when the team who made it aren’t there, take all the precautions seriously before we screen it more publicly. 

TNBFC: Okay, thanks. So more on how you filmed the film, you used a lot of colour, the beautiful scenery which highlighted the beauty of Katwe and its people. Was that an intentional choice to emphasise their dignity, their vibrancy and sort of contrast that with all the horrible injustices they’re also experiencing?

NS: I think especially in the editing, it became clear. But like I said in the beginning, the landscape is spectacular, so as a filmmaker, it's hard not to see and recognise it. We would bring up the camera whenever we saw the beautiful sceneries. For me, we are people who inhabit environments. Our environments become part of us. Everything we do is against the backdrop of the land we inhabit, of the environments we inhabit. Through cinema and filmmaking that lends itself to a poetic sensibility. Things can get poetic such as the methods of filmmaking, the relationships between people and the land. So these things, they present themselves to you as a person, as an outsider, as a filmmaker and they offer themselves to you to use. Especially in Katwe, it’s difficult to separate the people from their land. So even if I tried, I could not evade the salt lake or the salt pants. As time goes by, metaphors present themselves to you and you use them in order to enhance the issues that you are portraying such as issues about life, death, dignity, injustice and so on.

TNBFC: Yeah, it definitely makes sense. So what has your relationship been with the people of Katwe since you've left? I know you spoke about how you've kept in contact with some of the people. So what has your relationship been? And is it a place you feel quite connected to?

NS: For sure, I feel connected to the place after not just visiting the place and going back and forth but also, when you work with a film like this, you revisit the place all the time. For instance, when I hadn't spoken to Aboki for some time and when we speak and she’s always like you're lost. So I said, I talk to you every day on my screen, I joke with her. So there's a deep connection. I want to go back, whether just as a friend, as a brother that's visited the community and has ties or to continue the project. I don't know what's going to happen in Katwe, especially in terms of the issues that the film brings up. The industrialization of the Salt Mine, the Salt Lake and everything that entails. I think it's a story that is worth depicting and following up. In terms of my relationship with the people, I'm in contact with the main people in the film, Nicholas Boki and her family. We speak through WhatsApp every now and then, especially with Abokishi. If I haven't called her for some time, she makes it known. Sometimes she calls from a direct line. A really beautiful thing that happened was that during this summer, two of my friends went to Uganda to visit and they were traveling and we set them up to go to Katwe. They stayed in Katwe. They met all our friends there. They called us directly through a video link when they were with Boki and they were eating. It was really beautiful to be able to have friends from here, going there. It’s nice to reaffirm the relationships and the friendships. 

TNBFC: I really liked that at the end of the film, one of the girls was dancing and someone said Nima, I've never seen you dance.That was quite sweet.

NS: Yes, that was very sweet. She’s in Kampala now, working, it’s quite far away from Katwe. 

TNBFC: Nice. You probably have alluded to this as well already, but what kind of change would you most like to see from this film? Just telling the story of these people, or going far and getting into policy change?

NS: It depends on change on what level. If we're talking about individual lives, I think just by the process of making a film like this, when you build relationships with people, with some you engage with them for the rest of your life and their destiny becomes part of your destiny. To an extent you're able to help them with your extended community of friends and family. For instance, we're trying to fund the rebuilding of the Katwe Heritage Museum which was run by Nicholas and he was forced to close it down because of lack of funding. We're trying to help him rebuild it by starting fundraising. These are mostly on an individual level. If we're talking about structural changes, on a society basis, political changes, we have to be honest about the situation. The situation is that in a place like Katwe, a country like Uganda, it doesn't look the way it does because it's been completely isolated economically and politically. The injustices are what they are because of the exact opposite, because it has been fully integrated into our so called global economy, which is an economy based on uneven access, uneven distribution, uneven control over the riches of the masses. By the end of the film, you see, for instance, there's a voiceover, as one of the salt miners is carrying a big piece of salt on his back, of a woman. Her name is Christine Lagarde. By the time she was making that speech, it was in the beginning of 2017. She was in Kampala. She was the head of the IMF International Monetary Fund, one of the principal financial institutions, basically run by the United States in Washington D.C. that lends money and loans to countries like Uganda in the former colonial world and the global south, demanding so called structural adjustments and reforming of homes, which is basically the privatization of the entire land and the economy. And in that speech, Christine Lagarde is talking about how Uganda is this African success story. She cites rising GDP figures, the reduction in poverty rates. When you read the accounts of social scientists, activists, and anyone who has their feet on the ground, you see that the exact opposite is taking place. There's a social crisis in Uganda. People don't have access to health care or medication. The school system is a sort of mechanism of oppression in the country in the sense that school fees rely on parents hustling, just to send maybe one or two of their children to school. Also, it's important to speak about the state violence that exists and the widespread corruption that hits the most vulnerable and the poorest people the hardest. So then for someone like Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF to come to Uganda and say that it's an African success story tells you a lot about the mechanisms of oppression in the world. Especially since just a couple of months before she made that speech in Kampala, the Uganda state which carried out a massacre against the local kingdom. Human Rights Watch has written about this issue. They killed over 100 people and she does not mention it.  There is a world order where you have a complex system of financial institutions, Western donors, NGOs and Western governments, headed by the United States that want to design a society and a country like Uganda to look like it does and be in this state because it's benefiting them. It's benefiting multinational corporations. This is by design just a continuation of colonial exploitation. So this is the reality of the context in which Katwe exists and the people of Katwe are living and working, hoping for a change. I think a film like this creates awareness. I think the struggle for change is long term. The struggle for change is generational. It's not what we do at this moment. It's what we're doing at this moment in order to lay the grounds for the future generations to come. I think the struggle is in the long run, and a film like this is just one small puzzle. We've written just one chapter of the history of Katwe and the next chapters are to be written and the book is to be written by the people themselves, by Ugandans, by filmmakers in Uganda.

TNBFC: Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean you're an outsider, but you are also from a country that is still not fully colonised, but are still suffering consequences of similar things. Do you think that this experience has helped you understand Iran and what's happened in your community, like in Khuzestan.

NS: I moved from Iran when I was five, so I live in Sweden, but throughout my whole childhood we've been going back and I have a deep sense of connection to the country and to the people there. What you're saying is that even though the histories are quite different, the same mechanisms are there, which is outside intervention, outside control of your resources and the direction of where the country is heading. One of the books I was reading throughout making this film is a book called ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ by Walter Rodman. Walter Rodman was a great activist, scholar and he from Guinea in South America and he wrote that book. He researched it during the 70s when he was based in Tanzania. And what's funny is that one of his students during that time was President Museveni. Museveni was one of Walter Rodney's students and he wrote his dissertation or thesis on the use of anti colonial violence based on the writings and teachings of Franz Vano at Museveni. Fifteen years later he became the perfect neoliberal agent, selling out his country to these corporations and financial institutions. In that book, he makes it clear how what we see as regard to under development is basically the consequences of years and years of systemic exploitation, and he makes his arguments quite convincingly so it's difficult for someone to look at the reality of the present and try to solely understand it from a historical point of view. We engage with our emotions and history is quite far fetched for many of us. The world order that we see today has a history to it. There's a history of colonial and imperial conquest and exploitation that continues up to this day. Today, I think it's become ever so clear through witnessing the genocide in Gaza and what that has laid bare for many people, especially in contrast to the reactions of the West towards the war in Ukraine and to what's happening right now in Palestine and in Gaza. Back to your question, there are a lot of similarities between other countries in history.

TNBFC: And what's next for you? What's your next project? Or is that something you're thinking about? Are you still also thinking of continuing your project in Katwe?

NS: At the moment I'm just taking a step back, trying to process the experience, trying to engage with people that watch the film and then seeing what the next step will be. I'm not completely sure. 

TNBFC: I mean after you finished the project and came back from Uganda the last time, was it hard to transition back into your regular life or did you feel like you had to take some time to yourself as well to unpack everything?

NS: One experience that I have insight into is how quickly you overcome your immediate environment and the immediate reality. Of course in the beginning, when I returned, there was a transition time. But, if you're not making conscious efforts to remember and process your experience and the people, I think as a human being, there's a tendency not to forget, but to be consumed by the immediate reality that you find yourself in now, which in my case, was coming back to Sweden. I didn't edit anything until my return from my last journey in Uganda. I would film and then I wouldn't really watch the material, I would just store it and I would go back because I had it in the back of my mind. As I said, I did a lot of these things quite intuitively. So I wouldn't engage with the footage during those years, just go about my life, work, earn a living, and then go back to Uganda. So it was really after my last journey there that I started to really dive into the material, and a lot of these memories and experiences came back to me. I had to pinch my arm so many times to make myself conscious of what I had experienced and what I had seen. One thing that was really strange is that the first time I went to Uganda, it was just a couple of months after that massacre carried out by the state, in the state of Kasese, which is where Katwe is, and I went straight to Kaswe, and I was talking to people there and I was shocked how hundreds of people just disappeared. When I came back to Europe, to Sweden, no one had a clue about what happened as it hadn't been reported, or if it had been reported, you would have to really dig into the Internet to find it. That was a really strange experience for me because I came to understand how a massacre can be carried out in a part of the world and no one gets to know about it, and you don't really get to know about it until you go there. I had a similar experience when I went to Iran as well. So coming back from such a journey can be strange and can take time to understand.

TNBFC: Thank you for taking the time to speak to me. It's been really, really interesting. Thank you so much.

Katwe premiered at Sheffield DocFest in 2025.

To support Nicholas building the Katwe Salt Lake museum, as featured in the film, please donate using this link.