Rafiki

Rafiki drew international attention when it became the first Kenyan feature in an official Cannes Film Festival lineup and at the same moment was banned in Kenya for its sympathetic portrayal of a gay relationship (the African nation’s High Court overturned the ban). In reality, this is a fairly chaste story about two teenage girls who fall in love—a socially forbidden and legally perilous situation in Kenya—depicted with low-key delicacy by co-writer and director Wanuri Kahiu. Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) is a grungy skateboarder given to wearing baseball caps backward and hanging out like a kid sister with the boys. Ziki (Sheila Munyiva) appears in an explosion of colors, like a tropical bird, and is both more daring and ambitious than Kena. The pair bond and become lovers, although their visibility as a couple shocks their community—not only on moral grounds but also because their fathers are competing against one another in an upcoming election. Kahiu presents this world as a tiny, thriving pool of crosscurrent energies, a provincial setting where a cheerful town stud, a malevolent gossip, petty jealousies, dashed dreams, festive nights, and underachievement all add up to normalcy. But that everyday-life-veneer is cracked in a horrifying manner when a mob mentality aroused by hatred of Ziki and Kena’s relationship turns physically and emotionally violent. Mugatsia and Munyiva lead an excellent cast in a heartbreaking tale about what trying to hold on in an often senseless world. Recommended. (T. Keogh)