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"In chess, the small one can become the big one. The film also doesn't take much interest in chess specifics or strategies, beyond highlighting pawn promotion, when a piece crosses the entire board and is upgraded to a more powerful piece, like a knight or queen. Queen of Katwe never focuses much on individual matches, opponents, or play styles, beyond noting that once Mutesi understands the rules of the game, she plays with a confrontational aggression that's rare for a girl her age. He just encourages them to learn, and tries to give them opportunities to prove themselves by enrolling them in competitions against elite schools, and eventually in international programs. He knows his students are rough around the edges, and he doesn't try to polish or soften them. He's a practical teacher whose chess lessons come with life lessons, about planning ahead and learning mental discipline. If anything, he approves of her spirited response: "This is a place for fighters," he says.
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Coach Katende doesn't step in to defend her or stop her. Queen of Katwe takes the first of many unusual steps when some of the other chess kids mock Mutesi for being grimy and smelling bad, and she physically attacks them. At first, hanging around the mission is just another step toward getting enough food to survive. Her interest in the actual game comes later. When Mutesi follows her younger brother to a church mission program where Coach Robert Katende ( Selma star David Oyelowo) teaches chess to Katwe's kids, she's initially just curious. She and her older sister Night (Taryn Kyaze) and their younger brothers are growing up in a single-room hut, selling maize on the street to help their widowed mother Nakku ( 12 Years a Slave Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o) keep food on the table. Madina Nalwanga (a first-time actor who was born in the Katwe region, and had a childhood similar to Mutesi's) initially plays Mutesi as a stubborn, bullish young girl who's hesitant to speak around other people, but fights back ferociously when bullied. Queen of Katwe covers a period between 2007, when Mutesi discovered chess, and 2011, when she traveled to Siberia for the international Chess Olympiad, at age 14.
Queen of katwe reviews movie#
It brings in all the triumph and satisfaction of a conventional sports movie while skipping the conventional routine. But it’s the rare uplift story that also acknowledges the complexities of real life and real competition. This is the kind of uplifting story where devotion to a sport creates friendships and changes lives. There’s no easy, definitive way out of the slum for Mutesi, no single big chess competition that will let her defeat some smarmy villain and permanently secure her future. But it also deals frankly with crippling poverty and systemic class issues. Walt Disney Studios produced the film, and it has the cherubically light, cheery gloss of a Disney production. Which helps explain why Queen of Katwe is so unconventional, both as an underdog sports story and as a biopic. She has deep roots in Uganda, and they’ve given her enough experience and insight that she’s able to treat Katwe’s residents as people first, and parts of a familiar narrative second. American films set in African countries tend to focus on white characters witnessing atrocities, and they usually treat Africa as an exotic, dangerous backdrop. And she subsequently founded a small Kampala film school, with a focus on helping young Ugandans tell their own stories in cinema. She met her Ugandan husband during that shoot.
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She shot part of her film Mississippi Masala there. Nair, the Indian-born, New York-based director of Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, has worked in Kampala before. The film, based on the life of Ugandan chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi, was partially shot in the Kampala slum of Katwe, where Mutesi grew up. Mira Nair’s inspirational chess drama Queen of Katwe is remarkable in the simplest but most profound way: it’s an American film about Africa that doesn’t feel like it was made by tourists.