Features

Searching for Amani

A 13-year-old aspiring journalist investigates his father’s mysterious murder within the boundaries of one of Kenya’s largest wildlife conservancies. As a ravaging drought encroaches, his quest to find the killer shifts and an activist is born as the collateral damage of a warming world is revealed.

Thirteen-year-old Simon Ali is an aspiring investigative journalist living in Laikipia, Kenya, a lush area in the middle of the country where elephants roam and part of the savannah still thrives. It’s also one of the most unstable regions in Kenya making headlines for its violent clashes and record-breaking droughts.

Simon lived there with his family in relative peace until 2019 when his father was killed by armed pastoralists while working as a tour guide in the region’s largest wildlife conservancy. For over a year, Simon waited for the investigators to come and do their job, but they never came. Nobody came.

Forced  to take up the mantle of the investigation himself, determined to better understand a man he idolized (but hardly knew), Simon begins to search for the answers his family seeks. Shot over the course of three years, exploring the life and death of Simon’s father catalyzes a conversation about the changing environment, conservation, and community equity in a time of crisis.

Company: Gromlet x Backroads

Film Topics Include:

  • Nicole Gormley

    Director

  • Debra Aroko

    Director

  • Peter Goetz

    Producer

  • Mungai Kiroga 

    Producer

  • Simon Ali

    Co-Director

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