Filmmakers Taking "Tough Bond" Back To The Streets

Filmmakers Austin Peck and Anneliese Vandenburg spent three years living with and filming Kenya’s street kids, making the acclaimed film Tough Bond, which is named after the industrial strength glue the kids huff to get high in that part of the world. Now they are taking the film back to the streets of Kenya where Peck and Vandenberg want the film to act as a call for action.

The film itself is a a raw, unfiltered and unflinching look at the young people who, stripped of community and cultural heritage, are left to survive as their own tribe of outcasts on the streets of modern Kenya. It’s a story about what these kids do to stitch together the torn fabric of human life, to find dignity and love, and the many who find some measure of that comfort through their addiction to huffing glue. Peck and Vandenberg toured the film on the usual documentary festival circuit in the west, but now they plan to take it for an entirely different type of tour. Over the course of a month, the directors, alongside sound engineer Erik Lohr and the characters of the film will tour Tough Bond from village to village, all the way to the slums around the capital city of Nairobi, doing public screenings and community discussions, attempting to bring the humanity of these outcast children into the national spotlight in Kenya. “This is a campaign to give a voice to voiceless, and to turn art into action.” said director Austin Peck.