19 - 22nd
Of November

Lamu

Festival Awards Ceremony Registration

Maia Lekow, Carlos López Estrada and Ken Oloo Workshop
Facilitators

Come experience world-class filmmaking in Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Register

Festival Calendar

Inaugural edition · Thursday 19 – Sunday 22 November 2026

  1. Day 1 Thu 19 Nov

    • Arrivals and sunset sail
    • Opening ceremony at Lamu Square
  2. Workshop

    Day 2 Fri 20 Nov

    • Curated workshops hosted by Circle and Square, Filamu Juani, Creative Visions and Carlos López Estrada
    • Sprint brief is set
  3. Workshop

    Day 3 Sat 21 Nov

    • Festival day: dhow competition, donkey races and filming
    • Public workshop by Filamu Juani
  4. Awards

    Day 4 Sun 22 Nov

    • Film screenings across Lamu County
    • Dedicated Filamu Juani screening location
    • Final short-film submissions due; jury deliberations
    • Closing award ceremony

FiLamu plays on the Swahili word for film. Here it means film, in Lamu. A short-film festival and rapid-production lab in a town built on exchange.

For centuries Lamu was a stop on the Indian Ocean monsoon trade, where dhows carried cloth, spice and timber, and ideas travelled with the cargo. FiLamu reopens that route for stories. A short film is cargo too: compact, portable and made to travel.

The festival pairs global film expertise with local, phone-native creators. Each pairing gets a real production problem (a script, a scene, an edit) and solves it together.

I

The Short Film Strand

Curated narrative and documentary shorts, submitted and juried, screened on the outdoor screens Lamu's architecture already provides.

II

The New Media Strand

Vertical, social-native and mobile-shot work, including films made during the sprint, given the same programming respect.

Vintage film camera on a tripod in a wooden boat, against a yellow circle

How it works

At the heart of the festival is a rapid-production sprint: a film written and shot in a day or two, on location in Lamu, by mixed teams of visiting and local filmmakers.

  1. 01

    Get paired

    Each team joins a visiting filmmaker with one or more creatives from Lamu or wider Kenya.

  2. 02

    Brief to script

    The brief is set on Day 2 alongside a full day of workshops. Scripts are due by Day 4 midday.

  3. 03

    Shoot in Lamu

    Old town, Shela's dunes, the channel and its dhows, the barazas. The town is the backlot.

  4. 04

    Cut fast, screen fresh

    Edit on phones and laptops, then screen before the festival closes.

Founding commission

Filmmakers, funders and community leaders guiding programming, jury selection and creative direction for the inaugural edition.

Festival Awards Ceremony Registration

Sunday 22 November · Lamu

Be in the room when the festival crowns its first winners. Join filmmakers, funders and the Lamu community for the closing award ceremony. Reserve your seat below.

In collaboration with

  • Filamu Juani: life on reel
  • Creative Visions
  • Pamoja
  • Docubox, East African Documentary Film Fund
  • Afrobubblegum
  • Circle and Square Productions