Queen of Katwe: Uganda’s latest Hollywood production premiers

Queen of Katwe, a film about a young Ugandan girl’s rise from unimaginable squalor to global stardom looks poised to do well when it opens in theatres globally on September 30.

That the production revitalises hope that nothing is beyond achievement if one is firmly focused on changing his or her material conditions is bound to delight viewers.

The film is based on the story of the now 20-year-old Ugandan chess player, Phiona Mutesi (brilliantly rendered by Madina Nalwanga in a debut performance). By a stroke of chance, Mutesi stumbles into the game of chess and rises to become an international prodigy. Her success lifts her and her entire family out of abject poverty in Katwe slum, a gateway to Uganda’s capital Kampala.

READ: Uganda teen chess queen conquers the world piece by piece

For viewers, especially in East Africa, many aspects of their typical daily grind are well captured and presented — to say nothing of familiar physical backgrounds (the unflattering market environments, for instance). Many a viewer will be pleased to see themselves on this canvas, each according to their station in life.

On one hand a young, uneducated but attractive widow (well played by the Kenyan global superstar Lupita Nyong’o) slaves just to keep her four children alive. In one episode, instead of giving in to a friend’s sexual pursuit, she is forced to sell him her only prized possession — a beautiful traditional silk fabric gifted by her mother — in order to buy paraffin so her daughter can afford to burn the midnight oil to perfect her skill.

On the other hand is a fresh graduate and family man (superbly delivered by the high-flying British-Nigerian David Oyelowo) who cannot find a job in his engineering field of training, and has to get by with a part-time sports tutoring job. Even when it eventually comes, the righteous mission to offer a leg up to those without hope overwhelms him. A better world is made out of such selflessness. 

On one hand is a highbrow executive (Peter Odeke) who cannot stand the “unwashed” of the slums to play with children of the well-heeled of society he is in charge of. On the other is a full range of humanity: Boda boda riders, roadside food vendors, bricklayers, cart pushers, fishermen, drunkards, sex workers, idlers.

To be sure, the rags-to-riches, triumph over adversity plot of the two-hour long film is not entirely an unfamiliar one. Yet make no mistake that it is quite unlike any other underdog stories that have preceded it.

By a stroke of genius, Mira Nair, its director, ends up rendering multiple stories of accomplishment than the singular one it appears the film set out to tell. She, perhaps more importantly, bestows agency and purpose on her central characters — no matter that the only certainty they know is the uncertainty that marks every part of their lives.

That the picture absents the ultimate saviour (always white in colour), who swoops in from the West to save some unfortunates trapped backwaters of the so-called Third World, is reassuring. It shows, more than anything else, Ms Nair’s keen awareness of the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that shadow Africa.

And without belabouring her point, her newest offering — a $15 million Walt Disney production — is another invitation especially to the core Western audience of her pictures to re-examine the ways in which they choose to see the continent and, consequently, the prescriptions they impose on it to improve its fortunes.