Africa United - a dramatic feature film to be released in cinemas sept- oct 2010 - the fictional story of three Rwandan kids who end up walking to the South African 2010 World Cup - a funny, quirky, gorgeous, tragic road-movie love-letter to African kids and the beautiful game.

The Backstory
Christmas 2008, Rwandan film-makers Eric Kabera (Rwanda Film Festival and Cinema Centre founder) and Ayuub Kasasa Mago (co-writer on ‘We Are All Rwandans') contacted producers Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard of Footprint Films in the UK, and director Debs Gardner-Paterson with an idea and a treatment of the now known film project africa united. Those guys quickly shared it with Rhidian Brook, a screenwriter they were collaborating with on other projects (and who had previously spent a year with his family in Africa writing about the AIDS pandemic), and everyone had pretty much the same response - this is awesome and we need to get involved.

This idea - a dramatic feature film about a bunch of Rwandan kids who make their way 3000 miles south to the 2010 World Cup football tournament in South Africa - is just magic to us. Although it's fictional, it's very believable, and as much comedy and adventure as drama and tragedy. We feel it's an unbelievable opportunity to tell a totally different kind of African story with the backdrop of arguably the biggest world media event ever to be held on the sub-continent. This isn't politics, war, tourism or safaris: the protagonists aren't blood-thirsty thugs, pharmaceutical bandits or burnt-out aid-workers. This is an African kids' guide to their continent, the issues that are facing them, and the challenges and huge amount of hope there is for their generation. It's all very exciting, and possible and powerful.