RAFIKI plays TIFF 2018

Just before the lights went down on the premiere screening of Wanuri Kahiu’s RAFIKI, she told the packed house at Scotiabank 2 that the film was being censored in its native Kenya. Not for being too explicit, or too obscene…but for being too hopeful.

RAFIKI is the story of love and politics in Nairobi. While two men run for the same chair in local political office, their daughters have other ideas. The first time Kena and Ziki (Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva) lay eyes on one another, one can almost hear the figurative lightning bolt striking the ground they stand on. Their connection is charged and timid all at once, as they fumble towards ecstasy at the most inopportune moment. If people knew, their fathers could each lose the election they are running in…and if people knew, it could also bring both of them great harm.

But tell that to your heart when you’re young and in love.

RAFIKI is intimate and electric. Every time Kena and Ziki speak most sincerely, Kahiu gets creative with the edit. We hear their voices, but their lips don’t move. It’s a cinematic shorthand to depict the way we connect at our most vulnerable. We might hear the words being told to us, we might not. The reason isn’t because we aren’t listening, but because we are too caught up in what the person’s eyes are telling us…their hands…their smile. We are present for the conversation even if we don’t catch everything being said.

This is a film that trusts its audience. It is fearless in its love, and wants us to remember just how high we can be lifted when we put our trust in the right people. During one of their most stirring moments, Ziki looks at Kena and asks her to stay. The request is literal – she doesn’t want their affectionate rendezvous to end – but the statement seems bigger than that.

The film wants dearly for those that make us our best selves to remain close by; likewise, it wants those that might not fully grasp what we want or who we are to stick with us as we figure it out. The film knows how easy it is nowadays to walk, so it asks us sweetly to stay.

Sometimes, you just to talk to someone even when you don’t know what to say. There’s this flutter in your heart that tells you the words will come to you eventually if you can just get your mouth to start moving. That’s hope – the sort of hope this film is accused of falsely spreading.

Love in the face of tall obstacles is a tender contradiction. Love is RAFIKI itself.