25/09/2026
🤩 Meet Sonya M , an experimental filmmaker and editor whose moving-image work ‘Ukobola lina’/when do you return? is presented in Constellation Two of ANE 2026: Healing.
In ‘Ukobola lina’/when do you return?, Sonya archives the origin story of the Bagisu people while deciphering the complex, intertwined histories of a family navigating the African diaspora. Guided by the Luganda proverb agenda gy’amanyi tazibiriwa budde (“one who travels to a familiar place does not worry about arriving in the dark”), her work engages with surreal abstractions of word, image, and sonic texture where identity, culture, language, grief, and love become irrevocably entangled.
Taking a deeply tactile approach to analogue filmmaking, Sonya developed the film substrate using flora gathered across Uganda’s varied geographies including matooke, coffee, cassava, and indigenous flowers. Utilizing phytography a cameraless technique that harnesses the internal chemistry of plants to produce images directly on photographic emulsion, Sonya collaborated directly with the land, positioning the Ugandan landscape as a co-director.
By scanning for fragmented, wave-like frequencies across memory, light, time, space, and ritual, Sonya positions the archive as a vital site of emotional restoration offering a space to name, process, and transform diasporic grief into a generative form of re-existence.
Behind-the-Scenes: Swipe through to see photos of Sonya’s process, eco-processing celluloid, and working in collaboration with plant chemistry and the Ugandan landscape.
Sonya's work is currently on display at Njabala Foundation. Don't miss the chance to experience Sonya's transformative work in person ahead of the virtual talk on 2nd October!
RSVP with the link in bio✨
