Our memory is not to be trusted; it is interwoven with wishful thinking, dreams, romanticisations or repressions, superimposed or replaced by accidentally glimpsed images. If you want to make sure of your history, you might seek out the places of your childhood or youth to embark on a journey into the past. But what if those places are long gone, themselves as fleeting as the memories of them?

Director Won Taewoong was born in 1981, at a time when the city of Seoul, devastated in the civil war, was rapidly developing. Under the South Korean military dictatorship rice paddies turned into business and residential areas, multi-storey department stores with long escalators and attractions for children were built. In front of the Universe Department Store in Cheonho-dong on the eastern outskirts of the city, a space shuttle was erected that made the children’s imaginations run wild. But while modernisation was picking up speed, most of these malls closed down again after a few years. “Universe Department Store” is an attempted reconstruction. In conversations with peers whose memories often show enormous discrepancies and in hypnosis sessions, the director gets to the bottom of what memory is and discovers a dazzling universe between fact and fantasy.

Almost 100,000 people follow Bahati Ngazi on her eponymous TikTok channel. This is where the well-known radio host presents herself, pushes Mombasa’s small businesses and promotes herself as the woman with the “money complexion” who regularly bathes in fresh coconut milk. Her latest idea: She wants the local sex gurus – wise women from the Swahili community – to teach her a range of practices and thus mature from a novice (mikleso) to an expert (kungwi). The evening before already turns into a ritual: Bahati and a friend achieve a state of ecstasy with a bunch of khat leaves, sweets, tea, and music.
Director Saitabao Kaiyare becomes an interested and complicit companion on this educational journey, repeatedly directing his focus on feminist issues that are also on Bahati’s mind, not least in her radio show: What demands are made on Kenyan women? And is there a “love education” for men? “Unyagoni: Bahati’s Sex Education Journey” is the portrait of a bold and vibrant woman who shares not only her self-confidence but also her occasional insecurities. An entertaining yet no less complex journey.