A bittersweet, hopeful, and groundbreaking love story.

Rafiki tells the story of two young Kenyan women falling in love in a country where homosexual love, both on and off screen, is illegal. Armed with candy-like colors and passionate optimism, Rafiki stands out above the many other stories on the struggles of same-sex relationships as an unusually confident and sincere story of hope and love.

After getting showered with international praise in France, the Kenyan government publicly denounced the film because of its LGBT theme possessing a positive agenda despite homosexuality being illegal there with a potential sentence of fourteen years if caught. So officials would of course what to censor its message of free love and understanding to keep their population under foot. The courts eventually allowed Rafiki to be screened to sold-out audiences in multiple Kenyan cities (for seven days only), but it unsurprisingly wasn’t chosen to represent the country at the Oscars. The impact, however, has probably been as great as if it had won.

12A rating

After the film we will have a questions and answers about the context the film is set in and with Aida Holly-Nambi – podcast producer, board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission of Kenya