Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 113 minutes
Release Date: July 28th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: National Geographic Documentary Films
Director(s): Moses Bwayo & Christopher Sharp
Writer(s): Christopher Sharp

I am challenging you to a free and fair election.

You must give Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine a lot of credit. It’s one thing to have your eyes opened to the corruption of your homeland’s government and find the courage to use your popularity and platform to speak against it as he did in Uganda. It’s another to leverage that voice on a personal quest to spark real change by fighting back on the campaign trail despite knowing the threats and violence anyone who dares challenge “President” Yoweri Museveni will face. And as Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s documentary Bobi Wine: The People’s President shows, that risk can be even worse than you imagined.

This is an extensive, uncensored, and expertly constructed look at the lengths a dictator will go to wield his military regime and secure power. What starts in 2014 to show a thirty-something pop star speaking truth in his verses progresses through a successful Parliamentary win and multiple unjust incarcerations—one of which left Bobi tortured and briefly unable to walk without support. The filmmakers’ cameras catch it all: every example of the incumbent leader’s systematic reign of oppression. The lies. The murders. The kidnappings. The internet shutdowns. The unchecked hypocrisy project upon the world’s stage.

Yet despite all the fearmongering and attempts at silencing the will of the people by this tyrant, the real horror is the potential of resigning yourself to the fact that few if any people can actually do something about it. Bobi Wine is only able to get as far as he does because of his built-in fame and fortune. Anyone else would be helpless to continue at the first sign of danger because a lengthy arrest means an inability to work. Police blockades preventing you from leaving your home means an inability to secure food. Constant abuse means putting your family in the crosshairs with no means of escape.

Thankfully, Bobi does have the money and connections to not need to record new songs for a revenue stream. He can afford to put his children on a plane to America so they aren’t at risk of catching a bullet that’s meant for him—many in his entourage must instead. And even with that luxury, Museveni still keeps crossing the line to further consolidate his control. Even with Bobi’s celebrity putting millions of eyes upon an African election, the international community does little to truly help. So, it renders the musician-turned-politician even more heroic and revered. And, unfortunately, even more hopeless.

The challenge is therefore to not let futility set in. To not lose your determination in the thought that nothing will ever get better if someone with Bobi Wine’s reach barely makes a dent. Because his tireless work wasn’t just a dent. It wasn’t just a meaningless fight that left the country exactly where it was beforehand. His message resonated. It inspired the masses and made Museveni so afraid that he let the mask slip further than he ever had in the past, radicalizing more of a very young population in the process. Change might not happen overnight (or after eight years as in the case on-screen), but as Bobi exclaims, “It will happen.”

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Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (standing on roof of the vehicle), a candidate in Uganda’s general elections in 2021 and widely regarded as the closest challenger to incumbent Yoweri Museveni, campaigns in Butaleja district in the country’s East on November 17, 2020. (photo credit: Lookman Kampala)