THIS REVIEW IS PART OF BLITZ’S CONTINUED COVERAGE OF THE 71ST SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL, 5-16 JUNE. READ THE REST OF OUR REVIEWS HERE.
The Battle for Laikipia is a stark, urgent depiction of the intersectional battles faced by tribal and white pastoralists in Laikipia, thrusting us into the brutal reality of the battle for food, land, and power during a drought. The film's backdrop of postcolonial tensions heightens the political climate: Who deserves the land? How can all of these issues be remedied?
Directors Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi encourage us to ask these questions as the film follows the journey of the Samburu pastoralists and the white Kenyans of Laikipia, a spectacular safari region in Kenya. Each expresses a deep spiritual connection to the land, conservation with cultural and familial ties that have bound them to an agricultural plain that cannot be shared. The colonisation of Kenya during the late 1800s up until 1963 persists as an omnipresent tension, paired with an exasperating drought, confronts these two contrasting groups with a battle of who is deserving of the land and, more pressingly, what lines each is willing to cross. As the director Daphne Matziaraki describes Laikipia, ‘climate change brings on the surface issues that have been under the surface for so long’.