Free Money
Sam Soko & Lauren DeFilippo / & / 2022
A poor village in Kenya has been selected by an American NGO to take part in the world's largest experiment in citizen pay. Kenyan co-director Sam Soko follows the project sceptically over three years.
It’s the world’s biggest experiment in Universal Basic Income (UBI), and of all places in the world it’s taking place in the small, poor Kenyan village of Kogutu. For 12 years, villagers receive a monthly wage of about 20 dollars without having to work for it. What does this mean for poverty in the area? For the villagers’ dreams for the future? And what about the envy of the neighbouring village? The questions are big and potentially revolutionary, because the citizen’s wage is a political dream that is here to stay. Behind the project is an American NGO backed by Silicon Valley, and in the festival hit ‘Free Money’, Kenyan documentarian Sam Soko and co-director Lauren DeFilipo follow both the villagers and the Silicon Valley economists who are dreaming up tomorrow’s big ideas from a safe distance.