Judy Kibinge

Kibinge made her directorial debut when a producer who has worked in Hollywood, Njeri Karago asked her to direct a film titled Dangerous Affair . Finances and money for the film were raised and gained press attention in Kenya as very few films were made there at the time. Kibinge shot the film on a professional video cassette camera and was distributed by Karago film company. Dangerous Affair is a love story that tells the life of a young women named Kui who is trained as a New York banker and moves to Kenya and the man she meets in Kenya. It is a film about stories that has not been talked about before. It is a romantic comedy about loves, marriages and affairs. The film was shown at one of East Africa’s biggest and longest-running film festival, Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), where it was both well-received and recognized.

In 2017, Kibinge was chosen to be an Academy judge by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the categories of documentary, international features and animation.

Scarred: The Anatomy of Massacre was released in 2015. She uses her advertising background for a “visual hook” within the film. She photographed Wagalla survivors and their scars in a style that resembled a fashion shoot which led to a more dignified shoot for the survivors.  She used black and white portraits to establish a human connection between the survivors in the film and the audience watching.

Judy Kibinge is an award-winning Kenyan filmmaker, writer and producer. She has produced, wrote, and directed a number of films such as Something Necessary (2013), Dangerous Affair (2002), and Project Daddy (2004) which are her well-known creations. She is also known for establishing DocuBox, a documentary film fund for African filmmakers to help them produce and distribute their film. She released her first film, The Aftermath, in 2002 and critics have stated that she uses her films to impart stories about Kenya, particularly those about women and others that are typically not told in mainstream Hollywood.

Her films are known as depicting social taboos, violence in developing countries, and romantic comedy. Her film Something Necessary (2013) was screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, which is about a woman's struggle of living in Kenya after the elections unrest in 2007. This movie does not only focus on the character's mental states but also helps the world to realize the collapsed situation of Kenya, which started from colonization. She is also known for her documentary film called Coming of Age (2008) which she won an award at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009 for Best Short Documentary category. In addition to that, one of her significant films called Dangerous Affair (2002) won an award at the Zanzibar Film Festival. Her film often provides real life problems as opposed to fantasy and magical imaginations. However real-life problems she focuses on have a wide range. Her movies can be about personal issues between a couple which audiences can easily relate to, and also they can be about social problems occurring in Africa such as colonialism, war, and hunger. As being known for documentary movies, her film style usually contains many establishing shots, which depict the entire city and people who live there, rather than keep focusing on one person's life. In addition to that, she is a founding member of Kwani Trust, which is a n African magazine based in Kenya.

Before becoming a filmmaker, Kibinge worked in the advertising industry. In 1999 she left the advertising industry to pursue a filmmaking career and began directing commercial documentaries about Monsanto. Kibinge has been described as a trailblazer for other female Kenyan filmmakers by scholar Clara Giruzzi, to which she has stated that she is just one of the many women who are at the forefront of the rebirth of film in Kenya. She has directed both fiction and non-fiction and Kibinge has been commissioned to make various documentaries, specifically corporate documentaries.

Judy Kibinge began her career at McCann Erickson Kenya for eight years, where she was responsible for numerous award-winning adverts. She was the first black Creative Director at the company in Kenya. She moved on from McCann Erickson in October 1999 to pursue her career in Film industry. She has written and directed a short film for MNET, and she also produced corporate documentaries for IPPF, Monsanto, and Technoserve. Recently she has been working on writing a book. She founded DocuBox with funding from the Ford Foundation in order to develop the skills of filmmaking for African Filmmakers, as well as provide funding, distribution and production support for documentary filmmakers.

Judy Kibinge was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1967. Her family moved to Washington D.C. in America in 1969 when she was two. Her family stayed in the U.S. for five years. At the age of 7, she won a children's writing competition in America. She attended Kenya High School before she moved to UK for her post-secondary education.