Leaving Africa

Name: Leaving Africa
Director: Iiris Harma
Released: 2015

Iiris Harma 2015

Finnish doctor Riitta has been working in Uganda for more than 25 years. Together with her Ugandan friend Catherine, she brings sex education to Ugandan villages, challenging priests, imams, women and their husbands to discussions on women’s rights to their bodies, sexuality and life. In ultra-conservative Uganda, this soon leads to serious complications, jeopardizing their entire life’s work. This is a film about the quest for gender equality in Africa and the world’s greatest challenge – mitigating the population explosion.

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Running Time:

58/84 min.

Spoken Languages:

English, Finnish, Luganda

Subtitles:

English

Directors:

Iiris Harma

Producers:

Visa Koiso-Kanttila

Cinematographers:

Visa Koiso-Kanttila

Editors:

Niels Pagh Andersen

Production Companies:

Guerilla Films

Activism

African Cinema and Cul..

Immigration and Migrat..

Press

The Hollywood Reporter

Combining its important sociological message with compelling human drama, Leaving Africa offers a deeply personal view of Uganda's continuing policy of sexual oppression directed toward women and homosexuals.
POV Magazine

Leaving Africa is a powerful film that deals sensitively with these volatile issues.
Video Librarian

A powerful portrait of a pair of strong-willed women trying to create positive social change in an extremely negative environment, this is recommended.

Festival Participation

Hot Docs Toronto, Canada - 2015
Doc Point Helsinki, Finland - 2015
Audience Award Winner
Festival SiciliAmbiente, Italy - 2015
Best Documentary Winner
Antenna Documentary Film Festival, Australia - 2015
Sheffield Doc/Fest, UK - 2015
Leeds International Film Festival, UK - 2015
Moscow International Film Festival - 2015
Reykjavik
Antenna DFF

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Director's Statement
The gender equality is progressing in small steps. I find that it is extremely important to show the work done for equality matters. I am fascinated by how the religion and sexuality are so closely entangled in this film. It has been interesting to witness the dialogues between religious leaders when they exchange their views on issues around sex and sexuality and then reflect these views on the stories of individual women whose lives are directly affected by these values. Somehow this film is very comforting on a way how it brings people of different faiths together in order to tackle common social problems.

I am also interested to seek answers for these questions: what are the benefits of development cooperation? How does it help the community and what is its significance? What are the motives of the aid workers? I’m very happy that I can examine these issues through the emotional story of very unique and warm friendship of Finnish and Ugandan woman and share the humor and wisdom they have.

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