A love film is banned
Kenya banned "Rafiki" shortly before Cannes. The world applauded a love between two women from Nairobi anyway.
On 27 April 2018, the Kenyan film authority banned a film the country could actually have been proud of. "Rafiki", Swahili for "friend", tells the love story of two young women in Nairobi whose fathers are political rivals. Director Wanuri Kahiu based it on an award-winning short story by the Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko.
Shortly before, the news had come from France: "Rafiki" had been invited to Cannes, the first Kenyan feature film ever. The Kenya Film Classification Board, however, saw it above all as an attempt to promote lesbianism in Kenya. Anyone in possession of the film would be breaking the law, the board announced on Twitter. In the background was a colonial-era section that threatens same-sex sex with up to fourteen years in prison.
Kahiu reacted with disappointment. Queer content had long been available in Kenya on Netflix, she said. What was now being banned was, of all things, a local film that showed what was happening in society anyway.
In Cannes, audiences celebrated "Rafiki" with standing ovations in May. At home, the film remained banned. Kahiu therefore went to court, because to be eligible for the foreign-language Oscar, a film had to be shown in its own country. In September, Judge Wilfrida Okwany suspended the ban for seven days, with screenings for adults only. She was not convinced, she reasoned, that Kenya was such a weak society that a single film could shake its moral foundations. The head of the board was furious. The director, on the other hand, wrote that she was crying with joy at a French airport.
A small victory, nothing more: the ban applied again afterwards, and same-sex relationships are still a crime in Kenya today. But "Rafiki" had shown that an African love story between two women can find a worldwide audience.