The highly anticipated documentary, How To Build A Library (HTBAL), is set for its Kenyan homecoming. After an acclaimed world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, the film will open Kenya’s largest cinematic event, the NBO Film Festival, on October 16th.
The eight-year-long film is a nuanced and deeply human portrait of Book Bunk co-founders, Wanjiru “Shiro” Koinange and Angela Wachuka. It tracks their bold mission to restore Nairobi’s historic public libraries, which stand as both architectural and emotional markers of the nation’s colonial past.
What began in 2017 as a dream to renovate the iconic McMillan Memorial Library quickly ballooned into a profound confrontation with bureaucracy, power, and the complex question of reclaiming vanishing public spaces in a rapidly changing city. The documentary dives into the political complexities of this effort while revealing the personal cost of holding onto a vision that refuses to fade.
The film serves as a potent examination of Kenya’s post-colonial identity crisis, posing a question relevant to nations globally: How do we contend with our complex histories—do we erase them, or choose to remember and rebuild?
The film is directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher King. Their previous feature, The Letter (2019), was Kenya’s official submission to the 93rd Academy Awards, praised internationally for its intimacy and emotional power. Lekow is an award-winning Kenyan director, composer, and sound recordist, and King is an award-winning Australian director, editor, and cinematographer.
How To Build A Library will screen on October 16th, 17th, and 18th during the NBO Film Festival before commencing its nationwide theatrical release in cinemas and public spaces across the country.