She puts up a fight, though, winning Robert’s admiration (“This is a place for fighters”), and he assigns the youngest girl to teach Phiona the ropes. Immediately the other kids pick on her, turning away from her because she smells. A former street kid, the part-time mentoring missionary notices the girl peeking through the wall and beckons her to come inside. Yet one day out of curiosity, she follows a brother to a wooden one-room church where he and more than a dozen kids gather around chessboards (some homemade) in a mission run by Robert Katende (David Oyelowo). A girl roughly 10 years old (her exact birthday is unknown), Phiona is supposed to be helping her mother sell maize at market to help feed the family of five her father died from AIDS when she was an infant. Though certain colors pop out-oranges, yellows, and deep reds-through the cinematography that captures life in the equatorial light, it refrains from turning the landscape into an exotic other world. The stench is appalling.” The film, rather than sensationalize aspects of the shanty town, depicts the township matter-of-factly, with viewers gaining a sense of the environment: the crowded cheek-by-jowl mud and brick dwellings, the congested dirt roads, the lack of electricity and running water-Phiona has to walk several kilometers each day for fresh water. She lives in the largest slum of Kampala, Katwe, which is described by Crothers as “one of the worst places on earth.” The book goes on to say, “There is no sanitation service. As described by Crothers, Phiona Mutesi (played here by newcomer Madina Nalwanga) is a role model who has no example of her own to follow. Instead, it’s quietly triumphant, told modestly and straightforwardly.
The atypical East African setting distinguishes this real-life underdog tale, and more importantly, the film isn’t a compromised adaptation of Tim Crothers’s acclaimed 2012 nonfiction title The Queen of Katwe: One Girl’s Triumphant Path To Becoming a Chess Champion.
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That Walt Disney Pictures and ESPN Films have produced a reportedly $15 million movie about a Ugandan teenage girl turned chess champion is one reason Queen of Katwe stands out from the crowd. And so to go there and to have that environment to work from really did sober us and enliven us.Madina Nalwanga, left, and Lupita Nyong'o in Queen of Katwe (Toronto International Film Festival). The slum of Katwe is a very difficult place to live, but you see these people living there with dignity and making it day by day. The film was entirely shot in Uganda and South Africa.ĭescribing the film, Nyong'o said: "This is a story about the commitment to a dream even in the most discouraging of situations. Russel Savadier as the Russian Chess Officialĭirector Mira Nair decided to adapt The Queen of the Katwe book into a film after making a documentary about the life of the man who trained Phiona Mutesi, Robert Katende.Lupita Nyong'o as Harriet Mutesi, Phiona's mother.David Oyelowo as Robert Katende, a missionary who teaches chess to Phiona.Madina Nalwanga as Phiona Mutesi, a 10-year-old girl with a natural talent for chess.Her mother eventually realizes that Phiona has a chance to excel and teams up with Katende to help her fulfill her extraordinary potential, escape a life of poverty and save her family. She quickly advances through the ranks in tournaments, but breaks away from her family to focus on her own life. As Phiona begins to succeed in local chess competitions, Katende teaches her to read and write in order to pursue schooling. Recognizing Phiona’s natural aptitude for chess and the fighting spirit she’s inherited from her mother, Katende begins to mentor her, but Harriet is reluctant to provide any encouragement, not wanting to see her daughter disappointed.
Phiona is impressed by the intelligence and wit the game requires and immediately shows potential. Chess requires a good deal of concentration, strategic thinking and risk taking, all skills which are applicable in everyday life, and Katende hopes to empower youth with the game. When Phiona meets Robert Katende, a soccer player turned missionary who teaches local children chess, she is captivated. Her mother, Harriet, is fiercely determined to take care of her family and works tirelessly selling vegetables in the market to make sure her children are fed and have a roof over their heads. For 10-year-old Phiona Mutesi and her family, life in the impoverished slum of Katwe in Kampala, Uganda, is a constant struggle.
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