In 2013, my mother, a Kikuyu woman, moved to Tigoni, a lush tea-farming hub about 40 minutes outside Nairobi, Kenya. For her, it was a return to her childhood neighborhood at a time when she needed the kind of solace only coming home could provide. For me, a college freshman living in the U.S. then, it marked the beginning of an unexpected connection to a land and people I share ancestry with, but had only known from a distance, through other people’s memories.
My personal ties to Tigoni and its people made it easy to connect with Kikuyu Land, a documentary following Kenyan journalist Bea Wangondu’s efforts to uncover the “black truths” embedded in Kenya’s tea industry, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 25. But even without an ancestral connection, the film draws viewers in and refuses to let go.
Kikuyu Land opens with striking aerial shots of tea farms in Tigoni and a neighboring town, Limuru, as a young local boy, Stephen, delivers a gut-punching voiceover. His childlike curiosity amid the farms’ inhumanity becomes one of the documentary’s most powerful threads as he reflects that everyone carries “two stories — one the world sees and one they keep to themselves.” The line sets the stage for Wangondu’s fearless excavation of the tea industry’s intersections with colonialism, ongoing political violence, stolen land, and sexual abuse endured by the Kikuyu. It also underscores her personal connection to the community. Like Stephen, she was once a young girl growing up among the tea farms, hungry for answers. Cultural habits of telling “white lies” to mask generational trauma ensured she never found them — until now.
Kikuyu Land follows Wangondu, who co-directed the documentary with Emmy Award–winning filmmaker Andrew H. Brown, as she connects with local figures equally invested in uncovering the truth. Among them is Mungai Nganga, an invaluable resource who has tirelessly fought not only for land taken from his family by the tea industry, but for others across his community and Kenya who have faced similar injustices. He attended the film’s Sundance premiere, where he moved audiences by performing traditional Kikuyu hymns at a post-screening reception.
Nganga sits on the opposite end of the generational spectrum from Stephen, the young boy who embodies the questions and dreams long ignored by the tea industry. Where Stephen represents innocence and curiosity, Nganga wrestles with hard-won answers and the lasting consequences of oppression. Njenga Joseph, a passionate advocate for his community’s educational, logistical, and academic needs, emerges as another committed presence and emotional anchor in the film.
The documentary then turns its focus to the source of the Kikuyu people’s oppression. Wangondu reveals that many tea farms presenting themselves as locally owned are, in reality, overseen by multinational corporations that have embedded exploitative systems in the community for decades. Several companies are named, including Mabroukie Tea Factory and Brooke Bond, but Unilever emerges as Kikuyu Land‘s central antagonist. The British consumer goods giant is portrayed as a foundational force behind the Kenyan tea industry’s most troubling practices.
The film is unflinching in alleging the company’s complicity in the mass rape of women working on tea farms, as well as in the distribution of fraudulent land loans to Kikuyu families. These schemes ultimately stripped many of the land that was rightfully theirs.
Those atrocities come into sharp focus when Wangondu speaks with a woman who worked on tea farms in the late 1960s. Like many fellow tea pickers, she endured unimaginable abuse: grueling hours, extremely low wages, and repeated rape that resulted in three children. Kikuyu Land treats her candor as an act of profound bravery, holding her story with clear intention and care.
Kikuyu Land then turns inward, examining the role some Kenyans have played in perpetuating this abuse. The film boldly names controversial Kenyan President William Ruto as one of the “African middlemen” said to profit from the tea industry’s exploitative system. It scrutinizes the spectacle surrounding Ruto’s 2022 presidential bid and points to what it presents as his illicit financial ties to the industry. According to the documentary, those ties have fueled significant political violence, including the disappearance and alleged murders of outspoken figures.
One of the documentary’s most compelling threads — and one that arguably deserved more screen time — is Wangondu’s investigation into her family’s connection to the tea industry’s darker side. She discovers that her grandfather managed a tea farm and was implicated in land theft and abuse against his community. When she presses relatives for more information, they resist, leaving her with lingering questions and an inheritance of unresolved truth.
By its end, Kikuyu Land continues to wrestle with those questions, arriving at a sobering conclusion. The fight carries on for Mungai, Njenga, and Wangondu — all now facing danger as an election year looms in Kenya. The system forces Stephen to temper his curiosity, as it has for countless children before him. Yet the Kikuyu endure, their resilience captured beautifully in the documentary’s triumphant and thoughtful score by Nyokabi Kariũki and Keir Vine. Kikuyu Land is far more than a story about the Kikuyus’ struggle for land and identity. It reflects similar battles worldwide, including in the U.S., for the protection of people, justice, and truth. As Stephen reminds us at the film’s start, everyone carries two stories — one for the world and one kept to themselves. The more we listen to those internal stories, the closer we come to genuine progress.