In the north of Georgia, twelve kilometres from the Russian-influenced region of Abkhazia, a family are realising their dream. Under the optimistic motto “Plant the Future,” the Georgian government has launched a funding programme that enabled the people in this state which has been shaken by wars and crises for years to make a fresh start on their own farmland. With this support Soso, a retired engineer, took the big step in 2021 with his wife and two young sons and began growing blueberries.
Director Elene Mikaberidze and a dynamic camera follow the bold endeavour of the greenhorn farmers as they settle into their unfamiliar new life month by month. In the evenings, they pass the time with games and conversations, while the television is on in the background: images of a Ukraine under attack, news of the escalation in the Middle East remind the adults of the Russo-Georgian War sixteen years ago. Soso, the head of the family, contemplates his homeland in the midst of an escalating global situation. What dreams will still find a place there? Mother Nino is worried about her children’s future. She wants them to have the freedom to go their own way, to travel abroad and leave Georgia behind. Whether these ideas correspond with Soso’s remains to be seen.

“It is places like Laikipia that make some Kenyans begin to ask: Are we really independent?” For centuries, this region in the central Kenyan highlands has been a grazing area for the Samburus’ animals. With colonialisation, white people began to settle there, built ranches and farmed cattle. After Kenya’s independence in 1963, they stayed on. So far, relations between them and the locals have been alright, albeit distant. Climate change, however, increases the potential for conflict in the country and intensifies the competition for resources.
Laikipia has been suffering from the effects of global warming for several decades. Long periods of drought destroy the grassland the Samburu and their herds depend on. The white cattle farmers’ ranches and not least the privately managed and strictly guarded nature reserves cut through their traditional migration routes and block off the paths with electric fences. When elections are near, the disputes threaten to escalate. Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi followed Kenyans of all parties over a period of five years and give them a chance to tell their stories in this film.