Dear Future Me’ Film on Child Marriage of Girls in Kenya

“60 sheep, eight camels, and 100 goats.” These words from the protagonist of Nawi: Dear Future Me, a Kenyan-German coming-of-age drama film that was Kenya’s entry for the best international feature film race at the 2025 Oscars, hit home. After all, the movie tells the story of a young African girl battling child marriage in hopes of an education and self-determination. The list of animals is the price a stranger is willing to pay for the young bride.

On Tuesday, the film, directed by the brothers Toby and Kevin Schmutzler, as well as Apuu Mourine and Vallentine Chelluget, from a script by Milcah Cherotich, is getting the spotlight at the 15th edition of the Beijing International Film Festival.

Nawi screens in the main competition section of the fest, which runs through April 26. Chinese actor-director Jiang Wen (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Let the Bullets Fly) will serve as the head of the jury, which will hand out the fest’s Tiantan Award. The other jurors are Chinese American director and actor Joan Chen (The Last Emperor), British director David Yates (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), Chinese actor Ni Ni, Finnish director Teemu Nikki, Swiss director and actor Vincent Perez, and art director Tim Yip from Hong Kong.

Nawi centers on a girl called Nawi, the best student in her region, whose aspirations of attending high school are shattered when she learns that her father plans to marry her off to a stranger to ensure the family gets a substantial amount of livestock. Nawi‘s father is entrenched in tribal traditions, while her three mothers are limited by their traditional roles. So, Nawi flees on her wedding night.

Set in the remote Turkana region of Kenya, Nawi stars Michelle Lemuya Ikeny as the titular character, a role for which she won the African Movie Academy Award for best promising actor. The ensemble cast also features Joel Liwan, Ochungo Benson, Ben Tekee, Michelle Chebet Tiren, Patrick Oketch, Nungo Marrianne Akinyi, and Nyokabi Macharia. Produced as a collaboration between FilmCrew Media and Baobab Pictures with the Turkana-based NGO Learning Lions, which focuses on educational opportunities and social empowerment for young people, the film is based on a script that was the result of a national writing contest in which first-time writer Cherotich shared her idea. Atlas International Film is handling sales of the movie.

Watch a trailer for Nawi here.

Kevin and Toby Schmutzler recently talked to THR about how they came to the project, the collaborative approach behind the film’s creation, their focus on social impact filmmaking, and how the movie has already made a difference.

In 2017, the two were approached by an NGO in Kenya about making a film, likely a short, and they decided to travel there and meet people. “We tried to come up with stories with different writers from Germany, from Kenya, from the U.S., but it just didn’t feel right because it was always through this European gaze,” recalls Toby. “So, the NGO came up with the idea to host a writing competition in the East African Union about the vague topic of ‘the future of Africa.’ And we received many submissions and short stories. One of those short stories was so touching.”

It was from Cherotich, who ended up being the writer of the project. It was the story of Nawi and based on the real-life story of her sister. “Not all of it is accurate, but the main framework of the story is based on her family,” explains Toby. “And we said: ‘This is not only a short film, this is a feature film that we can do if we get her into a writers’ room.”

So, Cherotich, the Schmutzlers, and film students organized by the NGO, which also trains people in film and videography, worked on a script together. “We developed the script – us maybe bringing in more of the framework and the viewing habits and expectations of the Western audience, and Milcah and the other Kenyan ladies bringing their vision, their creative inpu,t and the real-life, cultural facts,” Toby says.

This collaboration worked really well. “We figured out that this mix of the Western gaze and perspective and the African perspective is actually quite interesting,” Kevin tells THR. “Many of the students didn’t know how to make a film or write a script, but we could provide that knowledge and let them focus on being creative and coming up with ideas. So we thought, why not try to mirror that approach on set with directing because we are still two white men telling a story about a black girl.”

So, they looked for and found two women from the region with interest, passion, and creativity. “Vallentine had already done a short film before, but Apuu graduated from the NGO program in a different subject,” Kevin recalls. “She did a lot of music and a lot of sewing and work with material. She was crafting bags and baskets and bringing knowledge from the smaller communities to the town and the other way around, trying to create employment for rural people. She’s super creative, and so she ended up being part of our directing team.”

The women knew the culture and “how everything should look and feel,” he highlights, recalling how he and his brother wanted to put an African actress on a chair for a certain scene, only to earn this feedback from the female directors: “She can’t sit on a chair. That’s not how we do it.” He continues: “They also knew to what measure women would speak up to a man and when they would retreat. Those were the kind of nuances that they could explain. Without them, we would do things wrong and screw it up culturally.”

One scene that caused particular debate was one in which Nawi and fisher boys sell fish on a market near a church. “With the art department and DPs Klaus Kneist and Mwende Renata, we had visualized the scene and they spent two hours setting up everything – all this dead fish, which was obviously smelly,” recalls Kevin. “And then Apuu said: ‘No, we can’t shoot it here – it’s too close to the church. They wouldn’t do this. The Bible forbids it.’ You can’t trade in front of God’s house. – ‘But it’s a film.’ Well, we ended up relocating the whole scene, about 100 meters away from the church, to accommodate the concerns, but to still have nice imagery as well.”

So, making the movie was a balancing act that required doing the splits regularly. “It was the main challenge of everything, knowing that this movie in the end would have two audiences – the Kenyan audience and the Western audience that you need for the global scale to promote education about the topic of child marriage,” Kevin explains. “We wanted to get this topic into European and American societies, get it discussed, and in the next step get to policymakers and raise money.”

Making sure the movie would represent Kenya, Turkana and their culture and be accepted there was key because that’s where the actual change happens, the Schmutzlers knew.

The movie was released in Kenya last year. “We had the second-longest cinema run of a local movie in Kenya ever,” shares Kevin. “In Nairobi, they loved it. And in Turkana, the younger generation was totally in awe. ‘Finally, we can discuss this topic.’ It’s amazing.”

Cherotich took the film on a USB stick and organized screenings in remote communities in the country, inviting men at markets to the movie without detailing its content. “Most of the men in the beginning were really cheering for Joel, Nawi’s brother, because he’s so funny,” Kevin shares her feedback. As the film continued, the viewers would realize it was addressing a challenging social topic. “But they didn’t leave. They were too hooked. Some of them even invited Milcah to their house afterwards, which is one of the biggest gestures of honor.”

One man even told her that he had married off his first daughter as a child and would now check on her, even though normally there is no contact anymore with the wife’s family. “If we get the movie to travel from community to community, there will be many small changes, eventually creating a bigger wave,” Kevin says.

Finding a lead actress was, of course, key, and Ikeny shines in every scene. The filmmakers quickly recognized her charisma and presence. “We went from school to school to cast, asking girls to say a sentence or two,” recalls Toby. “Then we had little recalls with the ones who were more interested or better in a way. Michelle stood out from the beginning. We knew it would be her or the girl who ended up playing her sister. Michelle just has an aura. She was 12 when we made the film. She is a small, fragile child, but when she enters a room, you can feel that she’s very mature and super clever. She really was the best pupil in Turkana in real life, and she went to high school in Nairobi, like Nawi wants to do.”

Also helping her understand the character Nawi was the fact that the actress had a good friend who got married off. “So she knows these girls, she knows what they would say, she knows how they would feel,” explains Toby. “We had a Kenyan acting coach for her for a couple of weeks before the shoot. But a lot came from within her. We’re super happy that we found her, because she obviously carries the whole film.”

Before the end credits of Nawi, the filmmakers also share more information about the topic of child marriage, mentioning that more than 640 million girls and women alive today were married as children.

“The festival run we’re experiencing is really incredible. And it’s really cool to bring the film to Beijing,” Toby tells THR. “This is a universal film, and even in China, obviously, it triggers something. That is because this is not a Turkana problem or a Kenyan problem. This is a worldwide issue.”

How did the Schmutzlers end up in social impact filmmaking? “When we drifted into filmmaking, being of the species of Generation Y, we thought, yeah, entertainment is cool, but there has to be something more valuable. There has to be some more meaning to it,” says Toby. “If we do this, we have to do it for the right reasons. And that’s when we said we would always look for stories and messages that also have a measurable real-life impact or cover a certain topic for a certain group of people. So that’s the vision for what we do.”

Adds Kevin: “It’s always about entertaining and engaging. And we noticed super early that is actually possible and the right thing to make entertainment that produces real-world change, that moves more than pixels. With Nawi, we attached a campaign for donations and a call to action before the closing credits.”

In the case of Nawi, the NGO created an initiative to fund education and school projects and emergency rescue projects for girls in danger. “We want to channel the awareness that the film hopefully generates once it’s really out there,” explains Toby. “After the movie, people are usually very emotional. We had a lot of screenings where people were wiping their tears and say, ‘Oh my God. I didn’t know that this is happening. What can we do?’ So just before the credits, we refer to the link to the Nawi Initiative. And we hope that people will go on that website, learn more about the topic and engage.”

It sounds like a cinematic warning. “The movie pictures a society where water is not a commodity anymore, where you have to really afford and earn it. It’s like a currency,” he explains. “The film looks at how a society and the rich-poor gap would evolve in such a world, one where we are headed, by the way. In the Southern hemisphere, this is already a huge issue today. In 10 years, there are going to be water wars – hopefully not.”

That is also reflected in the next project that the Schmutzler brothers are developing. “It’s called Beyond Day Zero,” shares Toby. “It’s on the topic of the water crisis and water privatization, and it is also written on the African continent, in South Africa.”