Queen Of Katwe: Inspiring film on niche sport

Cast: David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o, Madina Nalwanga

Rated: 6/10

Every once in a while, an inspiring sports film comes along to warm your hearts but such biopics are generally on popular sports like football or cricket. This one is on a niche sport and so all the more heartwarming.

This one is from an abject slum town in Uganda which breathes squalor as none other, so the achievement it sports makes it even more heart-warming.

This one is about a girl who is illiterate, who sells maize, who battles poverty with her strong-willed mother on a daily basis and who has no dreams to make a difference to her and her family’s life before showing up her brilliance in chess, and so it is extremely heart-warming.

There are many more reasons that warm up your heart to this one by Mira Nair. She serenades the struggles of an under-privileged girl who rises to become a national champion and a master of chess from an odd corner of the world where only NGO stories and welfare schemes make news.

For Nair to have picked up such an unknown sportsperson from such a nondescript place, that too around a sport that hardly ever turns heads or hearts, is commendable, moreso due to the film’s moving reality bytes and its debutant actors’ near-perfect portrayal of the characters that worked hard to make an overly ordinary girl the queen of Katwe. Nair’s effort is not just a feather in the hat of Uganda but an inspiration for aspiring sports people across the world.

This one is far removed from the nearness of an MS Dhoni. Yet it is a lure that need as many adult audience as children working themselves into sports. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 9 October, 2016