When Swiss-Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser set out to make his latest feature, he carried with him both personal grief and a curiosity about the role of technology in cinema. Memory of Princess Mumbi is an impressive improvised sci-fi romance mockumentary that premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of the ongoing Venice Film Festival.
Taking audiences to the year 2093, the story follows Kuve, a young documentary filmmaker, who travels to the kingdom of Umata intending to document life after a cataclysmic war. Instead of despair, he encounters Mumbi, a free-spirited actress whose challenge sparks both a creative debate and an ill-fated romance. Their relationship unfurls amid memory, art, and loss, giving the film a bittersweet texture that lingers long after its conclusion.
Hauser describes the project as a film that relies heavily on the incorporation of artificial intelligence, even as he consciously aimed to create a story that only a human could tell. Hauser employed AI tools to create futuristic landscapes, upscale imagery, and convert stills into motion. However, despite the technology being quite advantageous in terms of speed and vision, it also brought on a number of difficulties. “Some shots took weeks,” Hauser admitted, explaining the painstaking rotoscoping and compositing needed to make static images feel alive. His approach was deliberately patchwork, capturing the film’s low-fi, mash-up style and bringing attention to his belief that filmmaking remains a deeply human endeavor.
The project was also deeply personal to Hauser. He was grieving the death of his younger brother when he began sifting through their old video recordings. Memory of Princess Mumbi became his way of processing grief, transforming private mourning into an exploration of remembrance. Kuve’s journey to eulogize his lost love through cinema mirrors the director’s own attempt to honor the fragile beauty of the fleeting nature of life.
While Mumbi looks toward a speculative future, its roots, however, remain firmly grounded in what is real. Much of the film was shot on the coast of Kenya, with Hauser stressing the importance of natural lighting and authentic locations. AI had been used to expand this foundation, creating a retro-futuristic Africa that recaptured the painted-in effects that were present in 1980s and 1990s cinema.
The director acknowledges his ambivalence toward AI, fearing its potential to overshadow human creativity, but also accepting how it can democratize the industry by lowering barriers for filmmakers outside the traditional circles of power. This is particularly vital for African cinema from Hauser’s perspective, which has long faced structural obstacles in gaining global recognition. “Until now, it was always Hollywood telling the stories of the whole world,” he has said, noting that accessible technology allows filmmakers from Africa and beyond to bring their unique perspectives to international audiences.
Memory of Princess Mumbi, produced by Out of My Mind Films with co-production support from Hauserfilm and contributions from the Red Sea Film Fund, is Hauser’s fourth feature. His previous work established him as a daring young voice, but this film solidifies his standing as a director unafraid to experiment at the boundaries of form and technology. The mock-documentary structure, along with Kuve’s “behind-the-scenes” footage, assists the film in moving fluidly between fiction and reality, love and loss, and human and machine.
The Venice Film Festival 2025, running from August 28 to September 5, offers the perfect stage for this hybrid composition. In a subtle nod to its premiere, the film also includes a futuristic shot of a gondolier passing beneath a banner for the 94th Giornate degli Autori in 2097.
