Nairobi's NBO Film Festival adds a documentary prize and its first retrospective

Nairobi's NBO Film Festival returns for its seventh edition from 15 to 25 October 2026, spread across four venues in the city: Prestige Plaza, Unseen Cinema, Kaloleni Social Hall and, for the first time, Alliance Française Nairobi.

Built around the theme "Cinema for Us", this year's festival introduces two new elements: a documentary prize named after Kenyan filmmaker Nick Wambugu, who died in January 2026, and the festival's first-ever filmmaker retrospective, dedicated to French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis, who is expected to attend in person, according to announcements reported by allAfrica and Sinema Focus.

A festival built on access

NBO Film Festival was founded by Mbithi Masya, who serves as artistic director, and Sheba Hirst, according to Wikipedia's entry on Masya. The festival has positioned itself as a counterpoint to mall-cinema culture, running free screenings at Kaloleni Social Hall in Nairobi's Eastlands alongside paid programming elsewhere.

"The whole point of this festival was never to create another showbiz affair. It was the audience first," Masya told Okayafrica in coverage of last year's Kaloleni screenings, where twelve films were shown free of charge to local families.

This edition expands to three juried competitions: the returning Fiction Feature Film Competition, introduced in 2025, plus two new categories — a Short Film Fiction competition and the Nick Wambugu Prize for Documentary — according to Sinema Focus.

Why the documentary prize carries Wambugu's name

Nick Wambugu was a Kenyan documentarian best known for "The People Shall", co-directed with Mark Maina, which chronicled the 2024 Gen Z-led protests against the Finance Bill through seven personal narratives of loss, anger and online activism. The film screened at the NBO Film Festival in 2025, though that year's only juried competition was reserved for fiction features, so it was not a competition entry, per Sinema Focus's festival previews.

Wambugu died on 7 January 2026 at the age of 34, after battling hypocellular myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare bone marrow disorder, his father Francis Gichuki told the Nation. He had also been facing a court case linked to the BBC's "Blood Parliament" documentary on alleged security-force killings during the protests; both he and the BBC denied involvement, and a mention in the case at Milimani Law Courts was scheduled for the day he died, K24 reported. In 2025 he was named to Business Daily's Top 40 Under 40 list.

Retrospective for Alain Gomis

The retrospective, titled "Alain Gomis: Cinema to Revisit" on the festival's own site, is supported by EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture network. Gomis, born in France to a Senegalese father and a French mother and trained at the Sorbonne, is best known for "Tey" (2012), which won the Golden Stallion (Étalon de Yennenga) at FESPACO — the first Senegalese film to do so — and "Félicité" (2017), winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and a second Étalon d'or at FESPACO, according to Wikipedia's filmography entry. The retrospective will include screenings alongside a public conversation with the director.

A stake for Nairobi's documentary sector

not an official statement from the festival or the EU — East African documentary makers have long struggled to find exhibition routes beyond festivals; a dedicated competition category and an EUNIC-backed retrospective suggest growing institutional and European cultural-diplomacy interest in building exhibition routes for non-fiction film locally, rather than only abroad.

Attending the festival

Standard screenings at Prestige Plaza, Unseen Cinema and Alliance Française Nairobi cost KES 1,000 (about US$7.70, at roughly KES 130 to the dollar), with the opening film priced at KES 1,500 and a full-festival "Golden Ticket" pass available for KES 40,000, according to the festival's ticketing page on Mookh. Screenings at Kaloleni Social Hall remain free, continuing the festival's practice of bringing programming to Eastlands audiences. Jury chairs for the three competitions — Judy Kibinge (Fiction Feature), Sam Soko (Documentary Feature) and Lydia Matata (Short Film Fiction) — were announced on 4 September 2026 on the festival's website; competition line-ups followed on 7 September, and the opening film and special presentations were announced on 10 September, per Sinema Focus.