Rafiki

With a unbridled gaze, Wanuri Kahiu tells the love story between two girls in Nairobi who have to stand up to their repressive surroundings. “We need new images of Africa”, she says and thus presents the concept of “Afro-Bubblegum”—an aesthetic that doesn’t convey the continent as a place of sadness worthy of sympathy, but rather shows it in cheerful fashion, full of joie de vivre. She implements her film political manifesto with glowing colors, female rap, and an energetic dramatic structure. (Christian Weber) – “RAFIKI is at once a film about lesbian love as well as about feminist and political utopia in the smallest unit of society—the couple. It is a love that makes the laws of the fathers tumble down and subverts the patriarchy. It is a love that builds itself a new idea of future." (Beatrice Behn, sissy)