This surprisingly juicy film is based on the true story of Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a girl from Katwe, a sprawling, blighted district in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. It’s an elating achievement, and it’s all the more remarkable because she pulls it off in the context of an underdog sports movie. As audiences and actors demand more complex roles for people of color, let’s hope we see more groundbreaking projects like this one.In Queen of Katwe, the director Mira Nair captures the vitality and improbable beauty of the dense, crowded street culture in an East African slum without sentimentalizing its people or underplaying their deprivations and hazards. Since 7 percent of Uganda’s adult population is HIV-positive, the film would have benefited from tackling this topic.ĭespite this, Queen of Katwe is still a bright addition to Disney’s roster. The film leaves out the fact that Phiona’s father died of AIDS and that she and her mother have never been tested for fear that they, too, are hiv-positive. It’s remarkable to see a young woman-especially in a family film-name the environmental issues, poverty, sexism, and sexual violence she faces. “Soon, the men will come for me,” Phiona states plainly. Years later, after a flood carries away all of her family’s belongings, she says, “I made a plan against the rains, Coach, but the water didn’t care.” She then explains that her older sister has gotten pregnant by a man who courted and then dumped her. Coach repeatedly tells Phiona that as long as she thinks, makes a plan, and executes it, she’ll be fine. The script even undercuts its own underdog sports metaphors. In fact, when she wins her first competition, a female commissioner gives her a trophy and announces, “Such aggressiveness in a girl is quite a treasure.” Phiona doesn’t get distracted by boys or beauty. There are no wild animals, no wide-open landscapes. The only white folks onscreen are Phiona’s competitors in a tournament in Russia-and they don’t have speaking roles. Unlike most Disney and other Western films set in Africa and focused on Black people, this film doesn’t employ lazy, racist, heteronormative tropes.
Over the next five years, Phiona attempts to achieve grandmaster status while still navigating the struggles of her daily life. Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), who the kids call Coach, quickly realizes she’s a prodigy. Once she learns the game, she can see eight moves ahead. One day, she follows her brother to a dilapidated church, and she finds a refuge where kids are given daily servings of porridge-and chess.
She walks miles to fetch fresh water daily and sells maize in the streets. Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a girl from a slum in Katwe, Uganda, hustles to support her widowed mother (Lupita Nyong’o) and siblings by finding food and maintaining shelter.
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Based on a biographical sports essay published in ESPN The Magazine, which later became a book, this feel-good movie deserves applause. Subscribe today!ĭisney rarely challenges traditional representations of race and gender, but it does so in the remarkable Queen of Katwe. This article appears in our 2017 Winter issue, Chaos.