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. 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.
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