A Filmmaker Spotlights Anti-LGBTQ Bigotry

“I feel incredibly lucky to be telling stories for a living — whether my own or others,” writes Nicole Magabo (Uganda, UWC Costa Rica, Northwestern ’13). After earning a master’s in screenwriting from the London Film School, back home in Kampala she created Bad Mama Jama Films in 2018 and made her first short film, Family Tree, which can be seen on Vimeo and the Criterion Channel.

With a grant from the Open Society Foundation to tell stories of Ugandans marginalized by discrimination, Nicole made Be a Good Girl, a full-length film “about a young, queer, depressed woman in her late 20s falling out with her older brother who has decided to run for Parliament on a homophobic platform.” One of those she trained to join the production company was a nonbinary trans law student who then wrote and directed A Normal Boy, a Bad Mama Jama film “about a young boy who confides a secret about his male crush to an online friend.

“This is the project I am most proud of,” Nicole writes, even though both those movies are barred from domestic release by Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ law.

“Since 2020,” she reports, “BMJ has been awarded $419,000 in grant funding from the Open Society Foundation to continue this vital work of empowering storytellers from diverse backgrounds.”

Nicole volunteers for her local UWC chapter, “mentoring the next generation of UWC students,” along with working on new film projects. “The craftsmanship required to persevere as a storyteller takes a lifetime to master,” she adds. “But, no matter: one day at a time.”

This profile is part of the “Graduates in Action” series from the 2024 Annual Report.