For Mzee Bwanika, film is more than craft; it is community, continuity, and courage, a lifelong act of advocacy dressed in the language of light and story. His life reads like a script that began in hardship, rose through self-discovery, and continues as a portrait of resilience.
He is a man obsessed with structure who will be described in some circles as a mentor. Mzee, real name Julius Bwanika, is a believer in people, possibility, and the power of storytelling to rebuild broken things.
Family and advocacy define who he is, and run through everything he has done. He has spent more than two decades inside Uganda’s film scene as an actor, producing, marketing, lobbying, and holding together the threads of a dream many gave up on. His story begins in the rough corners of childhood, where survival came before art.
He lost his father, a soldier, in 1992 and his mother three years later. After they departed, life became difficult. To survive, he joined army schools, Jinja Army Primary and later Nakasongola Army Secondary, where routine offered stability.
Somewhere between parade drills and homework, art found him. On stage, playing an old man, his classmates began calling him Mzee. The name stuck.
‘People think it’s a title, but it’s the mother christened me.’ The nickname became part of his identity. He later on got to learn that family can be chosen.
‘The arts became my family. I found a space where I could speak without being judged.’ By the late 1990s, Kampala’s youth theatre scene was alive. Groups like Black Pearls and Afri-Diamond performed on stage and in schools and churches. For many, theatre was escape and expression.
It gave Bwanika peace because after losing his parents, he longed and searched for something to make him feel alive. This was at a time when television was beginning to colonise living rooms.
‘I once told Andrew Benon Kibuuka, ‘TV is becoming a pathogen to theatre,” he laughs. ‘He said, ‘You’re too young to understand.’ But I knew things were shifting.’
Film bug bites
When a Christian organisation offered computer courses to youth, he joined to keep busy. It was there, at Oasis Network Academy, that a Scottish visitor suggested adding a film module. ‘It was like God had whispered my name,’ he says.
He was one of 12 students who studied to the end of the course, learning how to tell stories through a lens. His first film, Behind the Scene (2004), explored what happens to church youth when the singing stops.
‘We wanted to show the human side of ministry,’ he says.
The project, shot with borrowed cameras, became his first lesson in humility. He says: ‘We learned the camera isn’t the story. It’s how people feel the story.’
He followed it with I Was There (2005), his first serious project. ‘When I held the final DVD, I thought, this is my future.’
A television station offered $1,000 (Shs3.6m) for full rights, but he refused. He thought it was too little. Later, he was praying even for $100 (Shs360,474). The rejection taught him the cruel arithmetic of film.
‘The problem wasn’t filmmaking. It was distribution. Anyone can make a film. The real question is how to sell it,’ he recounts. That realisation drew him into advocacy. He joined the Uganda Federation of Movie Industry (UFMI), a collective created to protect filmmakers’ rights. There, he met veterans like Anita Seruwagi.
Mzee helped build databases, design structures, and learn the law. In 2013, he became vice president of the Producers’ Class. But soon he grew restless.
‘UFMI could regulate, but it couldn’t trade,’ he says. ‘We needed markets, not just meetings.’ By 2015, he left, tired of policy talk and hungry for progress. Out of that frustration came Afro Cinema, his boldest experiment yet. Every Monday, three Ugandan films premiered at the National Theatre.
For a while, it felt like the golden age. People were lining up to watch Ugandan stories again. But the triumph was brief. Rival groups began selling soft-copy films cheaply, treating cinema like music singles. ‘With music, people can replay and the artist still performs. With film, once it’s watched, it’s done. That killed the market.’
Disillusioned, he considered quitting altogether. Then, in 2017, a phone call pulled him back.
‘A colleague told me, ‘We need to build something that works for all of us,” he says. ‘That’s how the Association of Power Film Producers Uganda was born.’
Using his own cinema hall in Kyebando as a meeting space, he hosted producers who met from morning to dusk drafting laws and a constitution. Enter Pearlwood
By 2018, the association was registered, the first formal guild for producers in Uganda. But a guild needed a unifying name. Years earlier, in 2013, Mzee and colleagues had brainstormed an identity like other film nations: Bollywood, Nollywood and Riverwood.
‘We thought maybe Ugawood,’ he laughs.
‘But it turned out Ugawood was a timber company in Ndeeba.’ Finally, someone suggested, ‘If Uganda is the Pearl of Africa, why not Pearlwood?’ They registered it quietly. Five years later, the name would become the brand of Uganda’s united film front. ‘It became our identity,’ he says.
‘Pearlwood is the dream of a united Ugandan film industry.’ Under Pearlwood, producers created a regulated distribution network linking publishers to regional distributors. For the first time, revenue began trickling back to creators.
Still, the challenges loomed-piracy, foreign dominance, and broadcasters feeding on illegal content.
He says: ‘A poor Ugandan film costs about Shs3m to make. A pirated foreign film costs data worth 2,000. How do you compete with that?’ Even as they negotiated with telecom giants like MTN for digital partnerships, Covid-19 arrived, freezing cinemas and halting progress. ‘But we never stopped dreaming,’ he says. That dream has evolved into structure. Through the Pearlwood Production Hub, filmmakers now share cameras, lighting, and editing facilities.
‘Competitiveness requires quality,’ he says. ‘We must match global standards.’ He also helped create Screenlist Films, a digital marketplace owned collectively by producers. ‘It’s not for me,’ he insists. ‘My children can’t inherit Screenlist Films. They can only inherit my titles. These initiatives belong to the collective.’
His newest project, A Life for Lives, takes his advocacy back to young people. The programme visits schools, turning the life stories of alumni into feature films acted by current students, and mentored by professionals.
‘We want young people to see heroes in their own communities. They don’t have to look to Hollywood,’ Bwanika says.
Two decades after his first short film, he still speaks with the same quiet conviction that carried him through loss and laughter.
‘I’ve been filming for more than 20 years. I’m nowhere near quitting.’ He smiles, the kind of smile that has seen enough disappointment to understand endurance. He adds, ‘Anybody can make a film. But not everyone can make it survive.’
For Mzee Bwanika, the camera is more than a tool. It is a torch, lighting paths for others to follow, even when the set goes dark. His story reminds us that film, at its heart, is not about fame or fortune, faith in people, stories, and the endless power of light to reveal who we are.
For a while longer, storytelling is likely to remain both a prayer and protest, a way of saying, in the only language he knows: Uganda’s film dream will not fade to black.