Neela Ghoshal, Senior Researcher, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program Human Rights Watch
Ezekiel Mutua, the head of Kenya’s Film Classification Board, didn’t want Kenyans to see Wanuri Kahiu’s internationally acclaimed film Rafiki. After watching the film, I can see why.
Mutua’s venomous attitude toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is no secret. Since becoming head of the film board in 2015, he has waged war against a series of artistic endeavors and events related to LGBT issues. Using the soapbox provided to him as Kenya’s film censor-in-chief, he has asserted vast powers, even attempting to ban a podcast and a speed-dating event. In 2016 he gained notoriety by writing to YouTube to ask the video platform to take down a re-telling of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s pro-equality anthem “Same Love” by the Kenyan artist Art Attack.
So it came as no surprise when Mutua banned Rafiki, a love story involving two young women whose fathers are pitted against one another in a local election, even after the film became Kenya’s first to be screened at Cannes, drawing plaudits from global audiences. He claimed the film would “promote lesbianism.”
Director Kahiu hoped to submit the film for an Oscar, but the ban stood in her way: entries must be first released in the country submitting the film. Emboldened by a series of progressive Kenyan court rulings on issues related to LGBT rights, Kahiu took the film board to court, arguing that the ban infringed on freedom of expression. She won a seven-day reprieve, just long enough to meet the Oscar screening requirements, beginning on September 23. Though Kenya’s Oscars selection committee ultimately chose another film, Kahiu’s victory was indisputable: the movie played to sold-out audiences in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu all week.
As a queer activist, I watched Rafiki, like nearly every queer-themed movie I see, with tension held tight in my belly; the fear that the entertaining plot, the innocent love, the self-discovery, would crescendo toward a moment of unspeakable violence. Because for too many LGBT people around the world, love stories don’t have happy endings. Love can mean brutality, even death. Or arrest, or family rejection. Read more via the Advocate