Newcomer Madina Nalwanga delivers quietly, yet forcefully as Phiona Mutesi, the alluded-to queen of the impoverished Ugandan province, Katwe. Lupita Nyong’o effectively executes the role of Nakku Harriet, the mother of the film’s titular character and the atypical matriarch whose faith and sacrificial love for her family grow despite a continuous and seemingly endless string of misfortunes that begin when her husband and the father of her four children dies unexpectedly. William Wheeler’s screenplay adequately displays Katende’s internal moral struggle that eventuates in his rejection of an offer to undertake a successful engineering career to instead coach a team of social outcasts - i.e. Here, we have the kind of creative and engaging expression of spirituality found in such recent works as 2015’s Selma and The Revenant and this year’s Hail Ceasar!, Hell or High Water, and Birth of a Nation.īased on true events as chronicled in the 2012 book Tim Crother published for ESPN, Katwe stars David Oyelowo as Robert Katende, a sports ministry leader who often opens chess matches with a word of prayer and employs culturally-significant parables as a means of motivating his players to persevere in the face of challenges both on and off the chess board. In veteran director Mira Nair’s vision, we see strands of references to faith organically and quietly pervading the film without ever becoming overbearing or overt. Disney’s Queen of Katwe remains within the tradition of unintentional Christian filmmaking that prefers subtle nuances and unspoken demonstrations of conviction over tired clichés, recycled tropes, wooden characters, and soap-boxy platitudes positing overly simplistic answers to the complexities of life lived in a fallen world.
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