‘Who Killed Captain Alex?’: the heart-warming tale of how Uganda made the cheapest movie ever
Up until recently, not many people would have pegged Uganda as a hotbed for genre cinema, but one production company has single-handedly altered that perception by gaining worldwide fame and adulation for its no-budget approach to action, comedy, sci-fi, and thrillers.
Credited officially as Ramon Film Productions, the company is better known as Wakaliwood, a film studio created and operated out of a Ugandan slum that specialises in viral sensations. That’s not the outfit’s intention, though, with founder and filmmaker Nabwana I.G.G. simply using the tools he has at his disposal to make features inspired by his love of action and martial arts.
It wasn’t Wakaliwood’s first film, but Who Killed Captain Alex? nonetheless served as its breakthrough. The trailer ended up becoming an online sensation that’s notched more than nine million views on YouTube, blowing apart the belief that the ability to craft a winning film requires anything that even remotely resembles a decent-sized budget.
Widely believed to have cost a princely $200 to produce, it transpired that Who Killed Captain Alex? was nowhere near as expensive after producer and Wakaliwood co-founder Alan Hofmanis confirmed that it was actually $85. Honestly, that’s a ludicrously small amount of cash to cobble together an entire movie that features blood, bullets, effects, and a number of set pieces, but that’s the studio’s DIY approach in a nutshell.
The effects were created on a computer Nabwana built himself from spare parts. Prop master Bisaso Dauda trawls scrapyards and junkyards to find anything he can to fashion helicopters, motorcycles, and weapons. The actors supply their own costumes and live on-site to cut down on travel costs. The blood squibs are condoms full of red food colouring, and the majority of people involved in a Wakaliwood production have to fit the shooting schedules around their day jobs.
It’s a triumph of imagination and ambition, with Who Killed Captain Alex? serving as a stellar calling card for an upstart company that doesn’t care how little they’ve got to work with when all they need to make dozens upon dozens of movies is a deep-seated love of the medium and more than a little ingenuity.
In terms of plot, it does exactly what it promises. The title character is killed under mysterious circumstances, forcing his brother – who also happens to be a Shaolin monk – to descend upon Kampala and embark on a quest for retribution that allows him to dust off his martial arts proficiency.
With barely two pennies to rub together, Who Killed Captain Alex? helped launch one of cinema’s unlikeliest empires, with Wakaliwood boasting fans all over the world who can’t help but be won over by the infectious enthusiasm and imagination that’s made Nabwana’s crew specialists in the world of micro-budget cinema.
