Uganda’s VJ Culture Takes Global Spotlight at Rotterdam Film Festival

Forget The Director, This Is Emmy’s Cut!, the film will screen on January 30 and February 1, 2026, with a special live VJ performance by VJ Emmy on January 31. The documentary is directed by Marion Desmaret, a French filmmaker whose work bridges Europe and East Africa.

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A Ugandan Story Told on Its Own Terms

At the heart of the film is VJ Emmy, Uganda’s most celebrated Video-Joker — a cultural icon whose voice has shaped how millions of Ugandans experience cinema. Though rarely seen on screen, VJ Emmy is widely recognized for his live Luganda and English narrations, translations, satire, and political commentary layered over foreign and local films.

In Uganda and across East Africa, VJ-ing is more than dubbing. It is a living performance tradition where imported movies are reclaimed, rewritten, and localized in real time. Action films, martial arts classics, and Hollywood blockbusters are transformed into stories that speak directly to Ugandan realities, humor, and politics.

Forget The Director, This Is Emmy’s Cut! does not merely document this practice — it adopts it as a cinematic method.

Cinema Without Permission

Shot in Kampala’s fading kibandas — informal neighborhood cinemas built from wood, speakers, and shared imagination — the film blends documentary, fiction, and layered narration. These communal spaces, once central to entertainment for working-class communities, are increasingly disappearing due to economic pressures and digital streaming.

Rather than explaining VJ culture from the outside, director Marion Desmaret hands full narrative control to VJ Emmy himself. Emmy “VJ-s” not only famous films but also his own life, his city, and the documentary itself.

The result is a film that deliberately rejects hierarchy in filmmaking.

“Forget the director — this is Emmy’s cut,” the film declares, posing a powerful question about authorship, ownership, and whose voice truly controls the story.

A Global Platform for a Local Tradition

IFFR is internationally respected for championing experimental and politically engaged cinema, making it a fitting home for a film rooted in popular culture and resistance. The selection places Uganda’s VJ tradition within global conversations on oral storytelling, postcolonial cinema, and alternative authorship.

Beyond the screenings, VJ Emmy has been invited to perform a live VJ session in Rotterdam, offering international audiences a rare chance to experience the practice as it was meant to be: loud, participatory, improvised, and communal.

During the live session, Emmy will interrupt, remix, translate, and re-author images in real time — collapsing the boundaries between film screening, stand-up performance, and oral history.

Director’s Journey

Marion Desmaret began her career at European broadcaster ARTE before moving into independent documentary and experimental filmmaking. Her portfolio includes interviews with global figures such as Al Gore, Depeche Mode, and Michèle Lamy, while maintaining a consistent focus on countercultures and marginalized voices.

In Uganda, Desmaret previously directed a documentary on the Nyege Nyege Festival and continues to collaborate with Kampala-based cultural collectives. Her work centers on stories that reshape society from the margins rather than institutions.

More Than a Film

The Rotterdam premiere of Forget The Director, This Is Emmy’s Cut! is being widely seen as a milestone — not only for Ugandan cinema, but for the recognition of VJ-ing as cinema itself, rather than a footnote to it.

As kibandas disappear and digital consumption reshapes viewing habits, the film arrives as both documentation and defiance — insisting that Uganda’s loud, unruly, and communal cinema culture still matters.

And now, the world is watching — and listening.

Screenings at IFFR 2026