"Growing up, I saw everybody else fall in love. I saw Europeans fall in love. I saw Americans continuously fall in love. But I never saw Africans fall in love. I saw Africans procreate. I saw Africans affected by HIV and AIDS, but those weren't love stories. And so more than anything, I wanted to add a love story to African film history, and that's why I made Rafiki." -- Director Wanuri Kahiu

A touching story of two young women who fall in love in homophobic Kenya, a place where it can get you beat up by a mob or imprisoned. There is a lot to like about the beautiful leads (Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva) and the dazzling colors on display in scene after scene, but my favorite part of the film was how it portrayed the tenderness of love. There is a sweetness to it that's undeniable, and cuts across any culture or orientation. Just a lovely film.

Samantha Mugatsia is a young Kenyan woman with her future all neatly planned: she will become a nurse and marry Neville Misati and have children and a middle class life. Then in walks Sheila Munyiva and they make a fumbling start towards a lesbian relationship.

Wanuri Kahiu's film isn't about the dreadful state of Africa that so many films have portrayed that continent throughout the history of the films. It's a love story, full of bright colors and parents and society -- opposing their union (homosexuality is still illegal in Kenya) their quest for happiness. It might as well have been Romeo and Mercutio, except that no one dies. Had it been a Hollywood movie set in New York, about a woman engaged to one man, falling in love with another, it would have been seen as puzzlingly banal in its plot; given its setting, it won numerous awards around the world. Isn't that sad?

This "Rafiki" (Swahili for "friend") has nothing to do with the character from "The Lion King". It is about a friendship between two young women which eventually becomes a lesbian romance. The two girls are the daughters of two political rivals who are candidates in the same election, although not too much is made of this aspect of the story.

The story is a fairly slight one, and were this an American or European film I doubt if it would have attracted much attention. Except, of course, this is not an American or European film. It is a Kenyan film and the two young women, Kena and Ziki, are from Nairobi. As in many other African countries, homosexuality is both illegal and socially taboo in Kenya, so a film on this theme was unprecedented there. The Kenyan film industry seems to be in the position which the British and American film industries were in in 1961. This was the year which saw the first mainstream British film about same-sex love ("Victim", about male homosexuality) and the first American one ("The Children's Hour", about lesbianism).

It was therefore a brave move on the part of director Wanuri Kahiu to make this film. It was, predictably, banned by the Kenyan authorities, "due to its homosexual theme and clear intent to promote lesbianism in Kenya contrary to the law". What upset them was not just that the film dealt with lesbianism but also that it treated the subject in a positive way. After a lawsuit the High Court of Kenya temporarily lifted the ban, allowing the film to be screened in the country for a limited period of one week. (The hope was that this would allow it to be considered for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but in the event another film became Kenya's nomination for this award). Let us hope that films like this one will lead to a change in attitudes to homosexuality in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. 7/10