Watatu

Yusuf is a young university graduate suffering discrimination, lack of opportunity and is raging against injustice. He slowly becomes seduced by extremist thought, which leaves his family powerless to dissuade him. His Uncle Salim, the only father figure in his life, is helpless in the face of his nephews ideology. When Salim discovers his new next-door neighbors is actually his long lost childhood friend, Jack, he is delighted. But Jack has become a policeman, a job which in a City increasingly divided by religion and tribe and simmering with violence, places a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between them. Yusuf, Jack and Salims lives become fatally and irrevocably entwined as Salim struggles to hold his friendship, family and community together. But Yusufs sister has another plan. Knowing that the communities of Mombasa may have the solution, she takes her story to the streets. As the film morphs into a documentary, we see real people in Mombasa assume the roles of Yusufs mother, sister and uncle, taking the story into their own hands to determine a new ending and in doing so give voice to the majority Muslim community of coastal Kenya drowned out by extremists on the one side and Government repression on the other. Can the citizens of Mombasa change the tragic outcome of this story?