The Next President of Malawi

Her husband's family has been in Malawi since his grandfather arrived as a British colonial railway soldier. Three generations later, they are Malawian in every sense. When she decided to run for president, she stepped into a political environment shaped by the Cashgate corruption scandal — a massive scheme of government theft that had exposed how badly the country's institutions had deteriorated. Her campaign was an attempt to offer something different in a context where that offer came with real risks.

The film documents what actually happened: the election rigging, the ballot warehouse that was burned before the count could be completed, the structural obstacles placed in the path of anyone trying to challenge the established order. The Next President of Malawi is a film about civic courage in a system designed to defeat it, and about a family whose roots in Malawi run deeper than anyone who tries to make them feel foreign would like to acknowledge.