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RAI FILM Festival takes place on 27-30 March 2025. Learn more.

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Atieno

Directed by Dorcas Akin, Effie Awino, June Ndinya, Lavine Atieno, Ruth Njoki

2018 – 64'

Synopsis

Atieno is a collaborative fiction film scripted, acted and directed by DreamGirls, a group of adolescent girls and young women from Nairobi and Kisumu. The film tells of Atieno, a 16 year old girl from a sleepy fishing village. Family circumstances force her to go work for her aunt Bertha in Nairobi and send money home. In Nairobi, Atieno discovers that the job aunt Bertha has for her is working at a bar, where she gets harassed by the clients. She has a big fight with Bertha and moves out. She eventually does odd jobs for a living before she sets up a small business with her friends. The film is used by the organisation Community Media Trust as an educational outreach tool to facilitate discussions about HIV, transactional sex and entrepreneurship. With the help of a facilitation guide (available here), the audience is asked to discuss the film’s open ended finale and to imagine how the characters will develop.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE FILM FACILITATION GUIDE

[Atieno-Facilitation-Guide.pdf](https://raifilm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Atieno-Facilitation-Guide.pdf)

RAI FILM Festival 2025

The next RAI FILM Festival will take place in person from 27-30 March 2025 at the Watershed Cinema and the Arnolfini International Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bristol (UK) and online throughout the month of April 2025.