Uganda’s Tarantino: 5 key influences from the filmmaker behind Wakaliwood

In Kampala, the capital of Uganda, there’s a neighbourhood called Wakaliga. Located a few miles from the city centre, with a population of just a few thousand, it’s often described as a slum. It’s also the birthplace of the DIY, ultra-violent cinema of the film collective Wakaliga Uganda (also known as Wakaliwood or Ramon Film Productions). Since 2005, co-founder Isaac Nabwana has assembled a ragtag team of actors, prop-makers, martial arts experts and more to produce action films on a shoestring budget – as little as $200 – earning him the title: Uganda’s Quentin Tarantino.

“I don’t care about it,” Nabwana tells Dazed of the moniker. “I don’t know Tarantino. I don’t know if it’s good or what. But I believe that if I’m called Tarantino, he should be called the Isaac of wherever he is.”

The comparisons to Tarantino – AKA Hollywood’s Isaac Nabwana – make sense. Wakaliwood has amassed a vast fictional bodycount via films like Who Killed Captain Alex? and Bad Black, featuring lo-fi helicopter gunships, kung-fu, and other physics-defying stunts. The blood splatter (and there’s plenty of it) is now produced by condoms filled with food colouring; it used to be cows’ blood, until someone swallowed some and got sick during the filming of Captain Alex in 2010.

Despite their tiny budgets and local productions, the films coming out of Wakaliwood have amassed a cult following across the world. They’ve been screened everywhere from MoMA to documenta fifteen, and fans travel across the globe to see where the magic happens. “I’ve seen people from all over the world,” says Nabwana. “People come here for their honeymoon. They want to celebrate their honeymoon by dying at Wakaliwood. They say, ‘I want to die on my honeymoon,’ and then I kill them. I have killed many people... in theatre.”

Wakaliga Uganda’s latest video work is Kibuuka Omumbaale, which takes centre stage at their first UK exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery. It’s an anarchic take on the superhero genre, telling the story of the titular Kibuuka Omumbaale, a warrior-god of the Kingdom of Buganda. The sacred remains of Kibuuka – who, according to legend, could fly among the clouds – are tied up with the history of British colonialism. (Surprise surprise.) 

“They exhumed his remains,” says Nabwana. “They took them to Cambridge University for research, because they were told that the guy was flying. After independence, they brought back the remains. They gave us back what belongs to us, but I have not seen a report of their findings. The story keeps circulating among our elders that they took him [around] the time aircrafts were first seen. So we believe that Kibuuka Omumbaale contributed to the existence of aircraft. But we don’t have the reports.” Why turn this into a superhero film? “Maybe to wake up the British,” he says. “We are seeing Batman. We are seeing Superman. We are seeing Thor. They are gods. This is our god story.”

Below, Nabwana tells us more about his career via five of Wakaliwood’s strongest influences, from African comics to Hollywood and Chinese cinema.

BRUCE LEE

When Nabwana was growing up in the 80s, a lot of cinema halls began to arrive in the villages around Kampala. He remembers seeing the painted adverts on the outside of the building – “Chuck Norris holding a big gun in a cowboy hat” – and the sounds of the films projected from a loudspeaker, but he was often forbidden from actually watching the films. “Mostly, children were not allowed to go to the cinema halls,” he explains. “But some of our brothers, the older ones, would escape to watch some movies, then come back and tells us [about them]. Especially Robert, my elder brother.”

“At this time, Bruce Lee was very, very, very famous here in Uganda. So Robert used to come back and tell me the stories. I remember him demonstrating the punches. When I watched the movie later, it was never as interesting as how he used to narrate them.” In the end, Robert taught Isaac kung fu, and by the late 80s he was already dreaming up his first martial arts film. Still a frequent collaborator, Robert is now a kung fu master with a school in Kampala.

“My older brother Robert used to come back and tell me the stories. I remember him demonstrating the punches. When I watched the movie later, it was never as interesting as how he used to narrate them” – Isaac Nabwana

LANCE SPEARMAN (AKA THE SPEAR)

Widely known as the James Bond of Africa, The Spear is a cigar-smoking, bow-tie-wearing super spy who regularly appeared in the weekly photo comic African Film. “For me, that was a film,” says Nabwana. “It was a comic book, but with real people. These magazines were really motivating us. Even if you didn’t go to a cinema hall, you could watch a movie through a magazine.”

Incidentally, the English James Bond – known by his moniker 007 – was also a “very famous” figure in Uganda at the time. “007! I like the word,” says Nabwana. “As young children, we used to say ‘James Bond 007’ when we were playing. It means a lot to me, but I don’t know what it actually means. I’ve never seen a James Bond movie.”

THE WILD GEESE (1978)

Nabwana only watched The Wild Geese – an action film starring Richard Burton and Roger Moore as British mercenaries in Sub-Saharan Africa – recently. However, he got a second-hand experience of the film via another of his older brothers, who went to watch it when he was a kid. “This time, it was not Robert, but my older brother Patrick,” he says. “He liked it very much.”

He and his brothers were heavily inspired by the film when making Who Killed Captain Alex?, he explains – especially when it came to the fighting and stunts. “I liked the realistic action, not this action where they pull people around on ropes. I like the old action, the realistic action.”

LOGAN’S RUN AND HAWAII FIVE-O

Based on the film of the same name, the American sci-fi series Logan’s Run depicted a future utopia (but not really) where society was kept in balance by killing everyone at the age of 30. The main character, Logan 5, was a “sandman” tasked with terminating people who try to escape death, but now faced termination himself. It only ran for a few episodes before it was cancelled due to low ratings. Hawaii Five-O, on the other hand, ran for more than a decade, following fictional Honolulu detectives as they pursued criminals and international syndicates.

“We had a TV at home when I was young, so we used to watch them,” says Nabwana. “The truth is, I liked the motion of the pictures. I didn’t understand what was taking place in terms of dialogue, because I didn’t know how to speak English. I just enjoyed the action and the images.”

TITANIC (1997)

“So many people ask me the question, ‘Why did you choose action?’” says Nabwana. But it wasn’t so much a choice as the obvious path into filmmaking. “All the stars I knew from childhood were action stars,” he explains. “When I was among the first Ugandans to start making movies, I was like, ‘I have to make action.’”

That perspective changed when Titanic was released toward the end of the 20th century. “When we saw Titanic... I think that was the twist of understanding that even love stories can be movies,” the filmmaker adds. “It was so strong, so touching! The scenes, the way they were cut, is more action than love. You watch one hour, and you feel like you’ve lived through three hours.”

Wakaliga Uganda’s Kibuuka Omumbaale (2026) is on show at London’s Chisenhale Gallery until December 6.