Caboose

Nentawe (a young guy working with local youth groups) invited us to the Kaduna premiere of a new film, The Imam and the Pastor. It’s a film about two religious leaders who, in their youth, belonged to religious militias in Kaduna but have since reconciled and joined to promote peace. Their organisation has its own web site: The Inter-Faith Mediation Centre.

It’s very well presented and interesting, a mixture of footage of the two going about their work and interviews about their past and present. There’s also some archive footage from the various clashes that they are working to present a recurrence of. The segment showing the mass graves at Yelwan Shendam is particularly powerful.

Afterwards there were to be questions and answers. This being Nigeria, instead we got speeches from the representatives of the various bigwigs who’d been invited but couldn’t be bothered to turn up. Finally, two questions were allowed. Both people asked if there were going to be more showings of the film, especially in schools.

It seems that the filmmakers are hoping for funding and support to translate the film into local languages and they also plan to show it internationally in other conflict areas.