Bobi Wine: The People's President (2022)

PG-13 because it has absolutely uncensored real world violence, blood, and death.  This is a documentary that reminds you that dictators don't pull punches.  Throughout the story, innocent spectators and supporters of Bobi Wine are killed by the government.  There are scenes where people are bleeding out because it is footage that is captured by news cameras and documentarians.  This is a hard to watch movie.  PG-13.

DIRECTORS: Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp

I normally don't try to write two of these in one day, mainly because I know that my writing suffers (and because I really don't want to).  But I also know that the closer that I get to the Academy Awards, I will have to start stockpiling them and I'll end up rushing a whole bunch anyway.  So this is an active attempt by me to stay on top of work.  Besides, I have grading to do this weekend, so mind as well do this now.

I didn't want to watch this.  I don't know what it was about this movie that made me want to just skip it.  I think it was the combination that it was on Disney+ coupled with the banner that was attached to the movie on Disney+.  Yeah, I was wrong.  This is one of those movies that you absolutely must see.  While I will wholeheartedly recommend this movie (especially for the masses who need to be political and are simultaneously not squeamish), I have to admit that I've already seen this movie. Only the last time that I saw this movie, it was called Navalny.

Both of these movies were made the same year, despite the fact that Bobi Wine is up for the Oscars in 2024 and Navalny was up for an Academy Award in 2023.  The really upsetting part of this is that I now know that there is a dictators' playbook.  God, no documentary should share beats with other documentaries when it comes to oppression.  But honestly, there are scenes that I can put right next to each other and it would be the Pam Beasley holding up the same photo meme.  If my wife reads this, she might get upset because I become way too emotional when it comes to politics.  But how did the world get this way?  There are probably a ton of books that I should read that might depress me even more, but why is the need to hold onto power such a toxic trait?  I've always said that it takes a sociopath to want to lead a bunch of people.  There is some kind of mental condition to think that you could do a better job than everyone else.  With the case of Bobi Wine at least, there is a read on the man that it is a burdened candidate versus the eager candidate in office.

With Putin, Trump, and Museveni, I don't know what it is about holding that much control over people that makes it so attractive.  I tried putting myself in these people's shoes for a second.  These are people who are literally willing to kill scores of people to hold onto something that is about pride.  You know how there's healthy pride and unhealthy pride?  There has to be a word for the insanity that comes with dictatorship. There's no shame in leaving office.  Honestly, you have left your imprint on society and that's what you did.  I don't know if there is the notion that there still might be time to make changes that were not available before.  But these people are so beyond the notion that they are good people that they almost embrace the concept that they might be the world's supervillains.  I know, there's probably someone on the right in America who is mad at me for calling Trump a dictator.  Part of it is "His words, not me."  With the case of Meseveni, he has followers.  The documentary, for its one-sided position that I'm not wholly read up on, shows that some people genuinely think that Museveni is doing a great job.  

But at the same time, Uganda --according to the doc --is okay with showing the world that it doesn't mind giving into violence and illegal activity to secure something that is ultimately useless.  The thing that drives me up the wall is that everything that Museveni does in this movie seems way too overly complex.  It has to be pride, right?  Throughout the movie, Bobi Wine is arrested, attacked, and beaten.  He's almost killed a few times in the movie too.  Scores of Bobi Wine's followers are killed and beaten.  We get footage of this happening.  Bobi Wine is even in a press conference via Zoom when he's arrested live in front of the world.  Why do all this?  Why does Museveni go through all of this political capital when he can just either close elections or fake election results.  He gets everything he wants.  The military does not question his role in these elections, regardless of how corrupt the orders are.  Why not make it at least appear that there is a fair and safe election?  Part of me knows.  

A lot of it has to come with a divorce from reality.  Museveni lives in a world where he can do these things.  He wants to scare the opposition.  If Bobi Wine submits to Museveni's threats, there wouldn't be another Bobi Wine.  Similarly, people like me are the problem.  I like to think that I'm pretty politically in touch.  After all, there's only so much political real estate that I can invest in before it becomes overwhelming. But I had no idea who Bobi Wine is.  Museveni, in one of the interviews from the documentary, claims that the West is trying to influence his country's elections and democracy.  The reality is only international news junkies probably could have had a strong grasp about Uganda's electoral system before watching this documentary.  I'm part of that fault.  I'm sorry about that. Museveni can get away with this because the only reason that I was able to understand the events of what happened with Bobi Wine in Uganda is because of this documentary well after the events happened in the story.

Bobi Wine seems like an interesting dude.  Again, I'm taking all of this from a documentary placing him in the spotlight as the hero of Uganda.  My bias and inclination is to believe that he's as wholesome as the movie makes him out to be.  The reason that I really like him is that he's the poster child of what it means to make art political.  Okay, I don't like his music.  I don't.  I'm listening the a generic reggae beat while I write this, but his lyrics are...well, music tastes are subjective.  But I do love that he makes these songs that get messages across to his people.  Golly, when you listen to those songs, there's no ambiguity about the role of the people towards reshaping Uganda. See, the association I have of pop culture figures in politics has been shaped by the absurdity of such a thing happening. Again, Trump has completely changed how we talk about politics for the ever-loving worst.  But Bobi Wine also establishes that pop culture opens doors to people.  It seems like he's a pretty smart dude who understands the needs of the common man.  But he's got this leg up over a traditional politician because of the charisma that he exhibits. 

My favorite moment in the documentary had to be something that happened to Bobi Wine in an interview.  It was the moment that I really started loving the dude, so bear with me.  In an interview, Wine is asked whether or not that he himself would be corrupted by office.  Instead of instantly jumping away from such a grenade, he thought about it.  He confesses to genuinely admiring Museveni when he was a revolutionary back in the day.  In these moments, he reflects on what could have happened.  He didn't promise to not become a dictator (which sounds sketchy).  He was just filled with a sense of disappointment that Museveni held such potential.  It was personal for him.  The entire quest to remove Museveni from office was politically the right move for Bobi Wine.  But beyond that, he was seeing that Museveni's long dictatorship was the destruction of such potential for his country. It read more optimistically than any kind of instant denial.  What does make someone like Museveni go from being the change that people need to being something like he is?  It's a weird thought.  Maybe he was always like that.  Maybe Bobi Wine is like that too.  I doubt it, but I hate the idea that everyone who has power must be corrupted by it.

My bleeding heart liberalism was fed today.  I know.  It annoys everyone around me.  I wanted to fight for a country that I didn't ever pay attention to.  This section is going to be a little unfair because I really don't want to make it about the U.S.  This is Uganda's story and it doesn't lessen it because it is a Ugandan story.  But I can't help but see that we can view the horrors of Uganda because we are looking at it from the outside.  It all seems so backwards.  But I'm someone who was torn up by Trump firing tear gas on innocent protestors during the BLM protests.  Like, I told my wife that is is my Roman Empire.  I can't stop thinking about it.  We have a lot of these beats happening here.  Yet, because we can't imagine that America could turn into a dictatorship, we ignore the hallmarks and the siren song of the end of an Empire.  These are the documentaries that make me feel not crazy for speaking up.  Yeah, the tale of Bobi Wine is not an American tale, but I also want to add the caveat "yet."  We are inching closer to the word "democracy" being a word that we say means us, but is actually something that is just there to give us a sense of moral superiority.

It's powerful guys.  Really intense stuff.