Having won BEST ACTRESS for the past two years at the Uganda Film Festival (UFF) and currently nominated as Uganda’s MOST POPULAR ACTRESS in the DELTA TV Viewers’ Choice Movie Awards, Nisha Kalema dominates the Ugandan film industry.
Now Nisha is going international and launching her campaign for the 2019 BEST FOREIGN PICTURE Academy Award. Ms Kalema plans to turn her multi-award-winning movie FREEDOM (2016), which was made in English, into an Oscar competing ‘Foreign Language’ movie in time for consideration at the 2019 Academy Awards.
Nisha Kalema wrote the screenplay for FREEDOM; earned the 2016 BEST ACTRESS award at the UFF for her starring role as orphan Amelia and assistant directed the movie. She plans to direct the Oscar competing remake using the Ugandan vernacular Luganda instead of English.
The first step in Nisha Kalema’s audacious plan is a stage version of the movie, which she is bringing to the 70th Edinburgh Fringe Festival and London’s Bernie Grant Arts Centre, in August, directed by veteran director, actor and author Ray Shell. She intends to get noticed by backers.
At twenty-three years old Nisha Kalema is also an entrepreneur with a global vision. Seeing movies like Disney’s FROZEN make as much money from merchandising as from box office, Nisha decided that her latest script, HIJAB COOL, would not only give birth to a movie; but also, to merchandise.
“I’ve realised that to sustain and build my career I must have “passive income generators”; money-making stuff that does not require my physical presence. I’ve therefore partnered with others to create my own trademarked Hijab Cool™ product lines, which so far encompass fashion, cosmetics and toys.”
“There are not many positive movie roles for Hijab wearing Muslim women. The storyline for HIJAB COOL could as easily have been portrayed by girls in mini-skirts and belly-tops it’s about a fashion model who trades the catwalk for the boxing ring to investigate the role a shady boxing trainer in her sister’s death. But I’m a young Muslim woman and see no reason why a Muslim woman, modestly dressed and veiled, can’t be an action heroine in a high drama thriller, so the fashion model is Muslim. There will be dolls!” explains Nisha.
Nisha Kalema wants to kill off the erroneous stereotype of the young Muslim woman forced to wear a Hijab against her will and change the perverse perception of the Hijab wearing Muslim woman being a Jihadi bride or terrorists in the name of a twisted interpretation of Islam. Nisha Kalema wants the world to know that young Hijab wearing Muslim women, like her, are cool.
Watch out! There could be more than one Oscar for Ms Kalema in 2019. Insha’ Allah.
For Edinburgh Fringe Festival tickets visit:
www.tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/freedom
For Bernie Grant Arts Centre tickets visit:
www.berniegrantcentre.ticketabc.com/events/nisha-kalemafreedom/