This award-winning activist-environmentalist documentary takes us to a Kenyan province where we meet a farmer trying to engage in traditional agriculture. Kisilu was born in the same village, he grew up, but he escaped from it to the city from his brutal father. He remembers how his father, also a farmer, was a chronic alcoholic and how as children they slept outside, in the open, so that they could run away from him when he arrived drunk and started beating them. In the meantime, his father died, Kisilu returned home, now he also has a large family and is the complete opposite of his father. He tries to make a living from his work, and this colorful and interesting guy was found by the Norwegian-British documentary duo Julia Dahr and Hugh Hartford.
In fact, Kisila is also the co-author of this documentary, which calls for rain in the title, but the lack of precipitation is not the only problem he faces. Over the course of five years, this film was made, and it all started when Kisilu got a camera and started recording everything that was happening around him. He began filming his family, the village, but also the damage and disasters caused by climate change. That is why the title of this film can be looked at a bit ironically, because the rain that Kisila will call for a long time will soon appear, but it will be one of those storms of catastrophic proportions that will literally destroy everything in front of it. Kisil will soon be promoted not only to a local community leader, but also a global activist who will travel from his village to the world to warn leading world leaders of what is happening.
In recent years, we have indeed been overwhelmed by similar activist films that draw attention to the issue of global warming. And “Thank You for the Rain” was one of the expected, typical inspirational films with a protagonist full of energy and a desire to change the world starting with his local community for the better. After being premiered at the Copenhagen Film Festival, this film had a beautiful festival life and was screened at as many as 80 festivals around the world. As is often the case with such activist films, in parallel with it followed an international campaign to raise awareness among people about the changes that are happening, but also humanitarian actions in which they began to build irrigation systems in East Africa using Kisilu and the like. I can continue to do this hard work on the meager land.
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