Documentary Production
Long and mid-form documentary, from first research to final delivery. I direct, I produce, and I handle the route out to festivals and broadcasters.
See this workCommunicator · Filmmaker · Storyteller
Africa's stories,
told from the inside
You have something worth saying and one real chance to say it. Too often that story goes to someone who flies in for a week, and the people it belongs to never recognise themselves in it. I'm Kenneth Jura: Kenyan, multilingual, and able to carry a story from the strategy room to the field and back.
Aired on BBC Africa Eye
& Netflix
& Netflix
BBC Africa Eye
Netflix
Sundance
UNDP
UNESCO
OHCHR
IFAD
Oxfam
Hivos
South South North
International Budget Partnership
USAID
Heinrich Böll Foundation
APHRC
Malaria No More
Alliance Française
Standard Media Group
Docubox
Akili Dada
Pawa254
12+
Years running communications for organisations across Africa and beyond
29
Countries the work has reached, across Africa, Asia and Latin America
50k+
Impressions on campaigns I built and ran
45
Nationalities in the room at the Fair Global Deal retreat I facilitated
The practice
What people usually
ask me for
Most briefs arrive as one of these. Plenty arrive as several at once: a strategy that needs a film, or a film that needs a campaign behind it. That's usually fine.
Talk through a briefStrategic Communications
Multi-year, multi-country strategy. Who you're talking to, what the story is, where it runs, and how you'll know it worked.
See this workFacilitation & Training
Agenda design and live facilitation for retreats and convenings. Also storytelling training that leaves your team able to make the work themselves.
See this workCampaigns & Advocacy
Campaigns on health, civic rights and social justice, built to reach the public and the people who make the decisions.
See this workMotion & Explainer
Animation that makes budgets, policy and public participation make sense to the people they affect.
See this workWriting & Policy
Editorial, policy documents, and work published in both English and French.
See this workFlagship documentaries
Four films that
travelled furthest
Who you'd be working with
The same person plans it
and shoots it
I can sit in a strategy meeting with senior leaders, build the campaign, and talk to international media. Then I can go into the field and tell the story myself, on camera or on the page. I work in English, French, Kiswahili, Dholuo and other African languages, which matters when the story belongs to someone else.
- Produced “Softie”, the first Kenyan film screened at Sundance
- Secured a USD 46,000 grant for a documentary aired on BBC Africa Eye
- Built the first digital communications audit Voice Global had ever done
- Facilitated for OHCHR West Africa and IFAD's Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility
- Member of the Public Relations Society of Kenya and the Media Council of Kenya
How it runs
How a project
actually runs
Four stages, and you're in the room for all of them. No black boxes, no reveal at the end that nobody expected.
Book a conversation
01
Listen
We start with the people closest to the issue. The community, the grantees, the team who will live with whatever we make.
02
Shape
The research turns into a spine: who this is for, what needs to change, and the one idea everything else hangs from.
03
Produce
Direction, production and post. On location, with crews who already know the ground.
04
Amplify
Launch, distribution and measurement, so the work reaches people and you can show your funders what it did.
The through-line
“Every brief is really the same question: whose story is this, and what does it need to change?”
Kenneth Jura Obudho, Nairobi
Got a story that deserves better than a press release?
Tell me what you're working on. I'll tell you honestly whether film, strategy, facilitation, or none of the above, is what you actually need.