Pastor and activist, Mr Mungai seeks justice for the land that was stolen from his family in Kenya’s tea highlands.  Local journalist, Bea Wangondu decides to come alongside Mungai on his quest. Their enquiries brings them up against the faceless behemoth that is Unilever, making profit off black and brown bodies since the heyday of colonialism. In the search for accountability, Wangondu also discovers some unsettling truths closer to home about the complicity of indigenous middlemen, the sustainers of neo-colonialism. When her investigations take her to the UK, she finds that her grandfather, a man held in high esteem by members of their community, ‘behaved like the colonisers’ by cheating his neighbours out of their land. Culpability is not black-and-white. Both Mangui and Wangondu risk paying a heavy price for their relentless search.

Co-directed and produced by Wangondu herself and Andrew H. Brown, the 2026 Sundance Festival-nominated documentary, Kikuyu Land opens with footage of British colonial emissary par excellence, Evelyn Baring. He discusses the indigenous Kikuyu people like mere tools to be used for the exploitation of the region’s tea supplies and subsequently discarded.  ‘They raped our land. They displaced us. They stole our land’, decries Mr Mungai. He balances his Christian ethic not to hate his enemies with the equally Christian pursuit of justice. Refreshingly, there’s no pie-in-the-sky theology for this persevering minister.

Kikuyu Land is a familiar story of (neo)colonial pillaging. Familiar, yes but not hackneyed. This has much to do with the film being spearheaded by those directly affected by – or indirectly implicated in – land misappropriation in Kenya. Furthermore, Kikuyu Land foregrounds the perspectives of those that multinationals like Unilever would prefer to remain invisibilised. Women working on modern day plantations – mostly under anonymity –share horrific stories of systematic rape on the tea farms, not unlike what took place in the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. It’s just that now, the ruthless white overseers have been replaced by black ‘managers’, caught on camera, shamelessly bullying their subordinates. More chilling still, this has been going on for decades. ‘We [Kikuyu women] have carried the Unilever empire on our backs’, one witness/survivor wryly observes. Indeed, on their backs and often in their bellies.

Beyond several irritating, mechanical-sounding recorded messages, Unilever consistently refuses to respond to any of Wangondu’s requests for comment. Meanwhile, current Kenyan president William Ruto holds substantial shares in the company. As one anonymous informer quips, foreign powers can only exploit the African continent with the help of indigenous opportunists.  An accompanying montage that includes images of Sankara and Lumumba is a refresher on what happens to leaders who defy colonial interference.

The film is interspersed with (self-consciously) arty shots and footage of the next generation; a reminder that Mr Mungai’s fight for justice goes beyond the ancestors who never received theirs.

There’s no getting around it. Kikuyu Land is heavy, if important, watching. Wangondu and Brown’s film will have you once again questioning the apparently bottomless depravity of humankind, especially when filthy mammon is involved. Like the prophets of old, we ask, agonisingly ‘How long – ?’. If there’s a scintilla of comfort, it’s in the faith and determination of the Mr Manguis of the world. Justice won’t evade their tenacious grip forever.

This review is also featured on the I Was Just Thinking… blog