'Queen Of Katwe' - Review

Review of 'Queen Of Katwe':

2005, Kampala (Uganda): An engineer called Robert Katende joins an NGO and starts teaching chess to children in a slum in Katwe (the poorest area of the city). One of his students is a 10-year-old girl called Phiona Mutesi - the daughter of a widow with 4 children, who sells vegetables for a living. Under Katende's guidance, Phiona achieves the unlikely feat of becoming Uganda's national chess champion and an international chess player.

In 2012, Sports Illustrated reporter Tim Crothers wrote a book about Phiona Mutesi called Queen Of Katwe. And now, Meera Nayyar (Mira Nair) has made it into a movie - featuring Madina Nalwanga in the lead role.

The most striking thing about Queen Of Katwe is its depiction of the Kampala slum. The word 'poverty' is too feeble to be used here. This is a world where life is not a wide zone of comfort but just a thin line of existence - and any chance event (like a road accident or heavy rain) can push you right off that line. Where a simple thing like taking a bath is a major project. Where shops don't have open fronts but iron grills instead. But somehow, in the midst of all this deprivation and despair, the poor people of the slum manage to celebrate life - through music, dance and colour.

Queen Of Katwe is a simple and heart-warming story about real people, their real pain and suffering, their real hopes and dreams, their real victories and defeats. It is definitely a welcome change from Hollywood's mind-numbing superhero factory.