The movie industry is renowned for its soaring highs and crashing lows, but for writer/director Wanuri Kahiu, the debut of her second feature Rafiki (which means ‘friend’ in Swahili) prompted both.
A tender love story between two teenage girls Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) and Ziki (Sheila Munyiva), it became the first Kenyan film to be officially selected at the Cannes Film Festival this May. A joyous fortune indeed, frustration was to follow close behind as, shortly before setting off for the French Riviera, the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) banned the movie from ever being screened at home. Homosexuality is criminalised in Kenya, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
“Their problem is the promotion of homosexuality, the fact that people can be accepted in their own home,” Kahiu bristles over the phone from Nairobi. “I’m not sure how you can legitimise or promote anything? It’s not contagious.”
Content to settle for an 18 rating, she point blank refused to alter the film’s uplifting ending. “I truly believe that we need hopeful, joyful images in life, now more so than ever,” she says. 
Based on the 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing-winning short story Jambula Tree by Ugandan author Monica Arac de Nyeko, the filmmaker selected it specifically because of its hopeful message, something she wanted to place at the centre of a new wave of African filmmaking she coins AFROBUBBLEGUM. The cinematic movement’s three-word slogan sets the agenda: ‘fun, fierce and frivolous’.
Source: SFF
“It is absolutely important that African people are shown to be joyous, hopeful people,” Kahiu says. “We are so often shown full of hurt and pain and I just find that there hasn’t been enough space to celebrate our love of life. I wanted a pure love story, because growing up, I hadn’t watched any love stories with Africans in them, you know? It just seemed that everybody else had permission to fall in love, but Africans didn’t.”
When her producer suggested Jambula Tree, the story leapt off the page, Kahiu says. “It was so tender and kind.”
Wanuri Kahiu Source: SFF
At the very beginning of their careers, Munyiva and Mugatsia also leap off of the screen, delivering heartfelt performances that fizz with the effervescence of youth’s emboldened spirit, gradually overcoming tentative doubts to thrive.
Munyiva, who plays spunky dreadlocked dancer Ziki, was already an aspiring actor, but Kahiu discovered Mugatsia, who plays the more reserved Kena, at a friend’s party. “It was such a joy to work with them,” Kahiu says. “They have taken to it so well and they are just so glorious.”
She was fiercely proud to stand by their side in Cannes. “It was such a moment to be there, to be young African women on the red carpet. That, to me, was a bit of history making, because it just showed that we have a space in the place at the top.”
Kahiu is sorely disappointed Kenyans won’t get to see the movie, or at least not legally. “I truly believe that this film should be seen at home, because it is so authentically Kenyan. It was made for Kenyans to see, yah. No one can understand the nuances and the families as well as Kenyans will.”
Source: SFF
The KFCB may have silenced Rafiki officially, but they won’t silence Kahiu, nor other Kenyan creatives fighting for their right to be heard. “No one is going to stop me from doing my job. I fully intend to continue to make films in Kenya, because this I where I live, and it inspires me.”
The Rafiki crew included many women. Local artist Jebe drew the cool opening credit graphics and the suitably jubilant soundtrack almost exclusively features young female singers from Kenya. “We wanted to speak through the form of honouring women, and Nairobi women in particular,” Kahiu adds. “I want to be a person who continues to grow young women in the industry, from gaffers to grips to whatever you want to be. There is space for you. So I will work here, and I will fight to work here. Hope and femininity are quite a challenge in a patriarchal society, and the film is a commentary on that.”
As the director sees it, this fight is bigger than just her film. It’s about human rights in a country that has undergone a rocky pathway to democracy. “There’s a very strong contingent of people who believe in freedom of expression, as is guaranteed in our constitution. But you have to remember our constitution is very, very young. It’s only eight years old, so I think we are just beginning to test what it means, and I think that this is one of the ways it will happen.”
Source: SFF
Kahiu points to the Pope’s recent comment to gay Chilean man Juan Carlos Cruz, a whistle blower against sexual abuse cover ups in that country, that, “God made you like this,” as a sign of the changing times.
“There’s such significance in that,” she says. “Who you love is not controllable. It happens on such a deep, intimate level that cannot be measured or suppressed. And more than anything, everybody has the right to love, wherever they are in the world. If you are in Kenya, you have the right to love. If you are in Russia, you have the right to love. It’s so important for us to have that absolute human right, it defines who we are and our humanity.”
Rafiki will premiere on the new 24-hour SBS World Movies HD channel (channel 32) at 9.30pm on Monday 1 July. It will be available to stream at SBS On Demand after broadcast.
