Casting Call: Now casting for the feature film ENKOP (THE SOIL)

Gerald Langiri is now casting for ENKOP (THE SOIL), a powerful feature film produced by Lightbox / LBx Africa.

Enkop (The Soil) is set in a frontier ranching town in Kenya, where land, family, identity, race, inheritance, history, and power collide.This is a layered dramatic story that requires emotionally intelligent performers, strong screen presence, language authenticity, and the ability to carry a complex world truthfully.

We are currently casting Phase One, which focuses on the core family, primary supporting characters, and major dramatic roles.

Actors must be available for auditions, callbacks, possible chemistry reads, and rehearsals or coaching where required and this information will be shared to actors who do get shortlisted. This is a serious dramatic feature film. Please submit only if you are committed, available, and ready for a demanding casting process.

ROLES BEING CAST

Please go through the 18 roles below carefully and apply where you strongly fit.

1. FLORA NATAANA SIRONKA

Gender: Female
Playing Age: 25 to early 30s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Maasai
Role Size: Lead
Languages: English, Swahili, Maa

Flora is a journalist. Intelligent, observant, emotionally grounded, and quietly strong. She is not loud, but she sees everything. She enters the Marwa family world through her relationship with Ngunjiri and becomes one of the most important witnesses to the events that unfold.

She carries emotional vulnerability and moral clarity. The actress must be able to portray stillness, intelligence, pregnancy, grief, fear, restraint, and deep internal conflict.

Requirements: Maa-speaking ability is highly preferred. Experience is welcome, but emotional truth is more important than a long CV.

2. LORNA WAIGURU MARWA

Gender: Female
Playing Age: 50s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Lead
Languages: Kikuyu, English, Swahili

Lorna is the Marwa family matriarch. Intelligent, controlled, wounded, proud, and deeply complicated. She is a woman carrying years of disappointment, sacrifice, alcoholism, dignity, anger, and survival.

She is not simply a “mother” role. She is the emotional and moral battlefield of the story. She can be tender, terrifying, broken, strategic, and silent, sometimes all in the same scene.

Requirements: Strong dramatic actor required. Must be able to perform in Kikuyu and English. Must have emotional depth, maturity, and commanding screen presence.

3. HUTIA MARWA

Gender: Male
Playing Age: Early to mid 30s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Lead
Languages: English, Swahili, Kikuyu

Hutia is polished, sharp, physically present, and carefully put together. He looks like a man in control, until the ground under him starts moving.

He carries entitlement, family pride, insecurity, grief, masculinity, and pressure. He is Nelson and Lorna’s son, Ngunjiri’s brother, and Wanja’s husband.

Requirements: Actor must have strong screen presence, emotional range, and the ability to move from charm to rage to vulnerability. Kikuyu-speaking ability is important.

4. NGUNJIRI MARWA

Gender: Male
Playing Age: Late 20s to early 30s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Lead
Languages: English, Swahili. Kikuyu is an advantage.

Ngunjiri is a musician. Artistic, romantic, emotionally open, charming, and deeply fragile. He comes from privilege but carries the soul of someone who does not fully belong in the world he was born into.

He is Flora’s lover and the younger Marwa son. His emotional life is central to the film.

Requirements: Must be comfortable with music or singing. Guitar ability is a strong advantage. Actor must be able to portray vulnerability, charm, trauma, intoxication, romance, grief, and emotional collapse without overacting.

5. THEO GARRICK / THEODORE HUTIA GARRICK

Gender: Male
Playing Age: Mid to late 30s
Ethnicity: Mixed race
Role Size: Lead
Languages: English, preferably with a natural British or British-influenced accent

Theo is an outsider who arrives in Enkop and disrupts the Marwa family’s inheritance, identity, and sense of order. He is awkward, observant, restrained, and deeply out of place in this world.

He is not a loud character. His power is in discomfort, restraint, and the fact that his existence changes everything.

Requirements: Must have a natural British, British-Kenyan, or convincing British-influenced accent. Mixed-race actors are strongly encouraged to apply.

6. RONKORUA OLE SANKALE

Gender: Male
Playing Age: Late 30s to mid 40s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Maasai
Role Size: Lead / Primary Supporting
Languages: Maa, Swahili

Ronkorua is a strong Maasai leader. Charismatic, ideological, commanding, and politically aware. He carries the weight of land, identity, resistance, and community.

He must have powerful screen presence and the ability to hold silence, authority, and emotional intensity.

Requirements: Maa-speaking ability is required. Motorbike riding ability will be an advantage.

7. NELSON MARWA

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 60s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: Kikuyu, English

Nelson is a wealthy patriarch. Strategic, proud, powerful, secretive, and burdened by the world he helped build. His decisions shape the entire story, even after his death.

He is a man of land, power, history, regret, and unfinished business.

Requirements: Actor must have presence, authority, and the ability to suggest a lifetime of power and secrets in very few scenes. Kikuyu-speaking ability required. Actor must also be a good dancer and someone who genuinely enjoys dancing.

8. MORRIS

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 50s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English, Kikuyu

Morris is a lawyer and fixer. Intelligent, calculating, practical, and morally flexible. He knows how power works and how to survive inside it.

He is calm under pressure but always aware of danger.

Requirements: Actor must be able to play intelligence, tension, legal authority, and moral ambiguity. Kikuyu-speaking ability required.

9. PATRICK TUNDO

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 40s
Ethnicity: White
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English, Swahili is a strong advantage

Patrick Tundo is the Police Chief. He is arrogant, theatrical, corruptible, and fully aware of the power his uniform gives him. He rides into spaces like he owns them.

He represents law, intimidation, colonial hangover, corruption, and performance.

Requirements: White male actor required. Must have strong command and confidence. Horse-riding ability is a strong advantage.

10. GEORGE TUBMAN

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 60s
Ethnicity: White
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English. Kikuyu and/or Swahili is an advantage.

George Tubman is an old white rancher. Physically imposing, stubborn, volatile, and deeply attached to land. He belongs to the Kenyan Cowboy world, shaped by ranch life, entitlement, danger, and old power.

Requirements: White male actor required. Must have a strong physical presence. Actors with lived-in ranch energy, horse-riding experience, or rural familiarity are encouraged to apply.

11. PHILIP ARTHUR SHAW

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 60s
Ethnicity: White
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English

Philip Shaw is a wealthy white rancher. Aristocratic, composed, observant, and socially intelligent. He is part of the old ranching world, but he operates with more polish and restraint than Tubman.

Requirements: White male actor required. Must carry class, stillness, confidence, and old-world authority.

12. JANET SHAW

Gender: Female
Playing Age: Late 50s to 60s
Ethnicity: White
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English

Janet Shaw is Philip’s wife. Regal, elegant, empathetic, and socially refined. She is warm, but not weak. She understands the codes of the ranching elite and knows when to speak and when to observe.

Requirements: White female actor required. Must have emotional intelligence, elegance, and quiet authority.

13. KIAMBATI

Gender: Male
Playing Age: 60s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: Kikuyu, Swahili

Kiambati is a bartender and Nelson’s brother. Short, observant, grounded, quietly funny, and emotionally intelligent. He is connected to both the Marwa family and the wider town.

Requirements: Actor must have warmth, grounded presence, and natural comic timing without turning the role into comedy. Kikuyu-speaking ability required.

14. MERCY

Gender: Female
Playing Age: Early 20s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: Kikuyu, Swahili

Mercy is Kiambati’s daughter. Young, sharp, cheeky, fearless, and full of life. She is playful, but she is not soft. She has a strong mouth, a strong spirit, and a strong sense of herself.

Requirements: Actress must be vibrant, quick, bold, and natural. Kikuyu-speaking ability required.

15. WANJA

Gender: Female
Playing Age: Early to mid 30s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: English, Swahili. Kikuyu is an advantage.

Wanja is Hutia’s wife. Polished, composed, restrained, and quietly tense. She presents perfection, but underneath that surface is discomfort, distance, and emotional complexity.

Requirements: Actress must have elegance, restraint, and the ability to communicate tension with minimal dialogue.

16. NYAGA NALANGU

Gender: Male
Playing Age: Mid to late 30s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Kikuyu / Maasai background or mixed cultural identity
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: Kikuyu, Swahili. Maa is an advantage.

Nyaga is tall, physical, intense, and mysterious. He works as George Tubman’s foreman and is tied to some of the story’s violence and suspicion. He carries anger, silence, loyalty, and danger.

Requirements: Actor must have strong physical presence. Must be able to portray contained rage, loyalty, fear, and moral conflict.

17. NAEKU MWAURA

Gender: Female
Playing Age: 50s
Ethnicity / Tribe: Maasai
Role Size: Primary Supporting
Languages: Maa, Swahili

Naeku Mwaura is Nyaga’s mother. She is strong, emotional, rooted, confrontational, and deeply connected to land, family, and loss.

She carries the grief and rage of a mother whose world has been wounded.

Requirements: Maa-speaking ability required. Actress must have strong emotional presence and authenticity.

18. MARILYN

Gender: Female
Playing Age: 40s
Ethnicity: Black Kenyan
Role Size: Supporting
Languages: Swahili

Marilyn is the Marwa housekeeper. Loyal, anxious, observant, and very aware of the danger around her. She is part of the household but also separate from its power.

She sees things she should not see.

Requirements: Actress must be natural, grounded, expressive, and able to carry fear and loyalty truthfully.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Interested actors should send the following:

1. Full name
2. Age
3. Phone number
4. Current location
5. Recent clear headshot or photo
6. Full-body photo
7. Showreel or links to previous work, if available
8. Languages spoken
9. Role or roles you are interested in auditioning for
10. Any special skills, for example singing, guitar, dancing, horse riding, motorbike riding, cattle handling, or accents
11. A short introduction video, maximum 1 minute

In the introduction video, please state:

• Your name
• Age
• Location
• Languages you speak
• Role you are applying for
• Any relevant acting experience or special skills

WHERE TO SEND SUBMISSIONS

Send submissions to: glangiri@gmail.com

Email subject:
ENKOP PHASE ONE – [Your Name] – [Role]

Example:
ENKOP PHASE ONE – Mary Wanjiku – Flora

Deadline for application: Friday, 22nd May 2026.

Please check and recheck your submission before clicking on send.

Filming is to commence in August 2026.