Reuben Odanga on directing Kenya’s first Christmas feature, A Familiar Christmas

With over fifteen years in the industry, award-winning director and producer Reuben Odanga is one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Kenya. Popularly known for directing and producing the industry-defining Swahili telenovela Selina, Odanga has also recently ventured in films, making his feature film directorial debut with Nafsi in 2021. Nafsi made history by becoming the first Kenyan film to achieve an 8-week consecutive theatrical run.

A Familiar Christmas, the first Kenyan Christmas feature film, now streaming on Showmax, is his second film to direct and produce.

How would you describe A Familiar Christmas?

A Familiar Christmas is a story that celebrates how Kenyans define Christmas and what it means to us. For most Kenyans, Christmas means going home and reuniting with family. There’s also cooking and feasting and a lot of joy. This film tells the Christmas story from a Kenyan perspective, and it’s a story that’s relevant to our audiences during this festive season.

What other Kenyan Christmas elements are we going to see in this film?

Other than the whole idea about food and festivity, for people who are at the age of getting married or not getting married, it also shows the aspect of having parents who are very involved in your personal lives. It’s really a family movie with those Kenyan nuances. It’s not very exaggerated or aspirational, it’s just a real story and you can see yourself in the story.

This is the first project you’re directing after Selina which you worked on for 5 years and which wrapped in March 2022, was it hard getting back?

It came with challenges in the sense that it was very easy for us to bring Selina into this project, and so the production process had to be a bit more intense and a bit more targeted to the Christmas feeling, mood and colours

A lot of preproduction happened, a lot of back and forth and rehearsals in terms of casting because we took a risk with very new actors.

It was also a challenge because making a story that looks simple can be very difficult since simple can be boring. It felt nice to try something new and I’m excited about what the audience is about to watch.

A Familiar Christmas is the first Kenyan Christmas feature, how does it feel to be the director helming such a project?

It feels very nice to direct the first Kenyan Christmas feature film. The reason why this project is close to my heart is because we are telling our stories. It’s a story that’s very relevant to this market. There’s this saying in MultiChoice about telling hyperlocal stories. A Familiar Christmas purely define that statement of hyperlocal. It’s a very local story and I think our audience will be able to relate with the realities in the world in this story. I’m excited about that bit but I’m also challenged. I can’t wait to see how the audience interacts with it, and maybe pick our lessons and our flowers at the same time. I also hope that this can be an annual thing, that we can have a Christmas story moving forward every year.

How did this project come about?

A Familiar Christmas came about when Natasha Likimani, who is the film’s writer, reached out to me with the concept and I liked it. We actually pitched it to Showmax in 2021 but when it was greenlit, it was too late to go into production for a 2021 Christmas movie so we pushed the project to 2022

Before that, I’d always wanted to do a play. My vision was to stage a Christmas play at Nairobi CBD with Selina actors but that was not possible because of the timing – Selina was a daily show.

Then I pitched another concept to MultiChoice about a crossover Christmas film that would feature actors from different shows across Maisha Magic channels like Selina, Kina, and Njoro wa Uba so that it would be like all the actors from other shows convened into this world. Again, this wasn’t possible because of the schedule of all the other productions.

This film is shot on single location in Tigoni, was it challenging to tell this story, and to capture the dramatic moments in just one location?

Shooting in one location is quite challenging in the fact that you have to remember that the story has to look fresh in post-production. But I think we did good work, even in the setup of the story. It’s all about ‘how do we keep the story active and how do we keep it going?’ We had a very beautiful location somewhere in Tigoni and I think we made good use of the location.

Actual principal photography took about eighteen days, and a few more days for pickup shots. And we used two cameras so that we can move slightly faster since we were filming during a very cold season, in the highlands of Kenya (Tigoni) so the weather wasn’t very friendly.

A Familiar Christmas is now streaming on Showmax.