#QUEEN OF KATWE AMC MOVIE#

ItвЂ™s a Hollywood film with an all-black cast that is not about racism or slavery a film set in Africa that is not about war or famine. The result is a film that sticks closely enough to inspirational underdog sports-movie formula (prescinding from whether chess is a sport) to fit comfortably, and predictably, alongside the likes of The Rookie and Miracle, while depicting a world seldom, if ever, seen on multiplex screens. Morefield, reads simply, вЂњDisney Made a Film About a Ugandan Christian Female Chess Champion.вЂќ ItвЂ™s improbable enough that the headline for a story about the film at, filed from the Toronto International Film Festival by Kenneth R.

#QUEEN OF KATWE AMC MOVIE#

(The book, by Tim Crothers, is also called The Queen of Katwe, but according to Nair the movie isnвЂ™t adapted from the book.) Third, Christian faith is a notable part of PhionaвЂ™s story, which first circulated in a church magazine and went on to appear in ESPN magazine before becoming an acclaimed book. Second, itвЂ™s set in Africa, and there are no white characters (and also, Nair has quipped, no animals).

PhionaвЂ™s story certainly deserves to be told, but itвЂ™s not necessarily the sort of story you expect from Disney, for at least three reasons.ДЇirst, chess doesnвЂ™t lend itself to popular moviemaking. I have to think Queen of Katwe will delight practically everyone who sees it.ДЄctually, the reasons the film shouldnвЂ™t exist start with the improbability of an illiterate girl from the Katwe slum being exposed to chess in the first place, let alone beginning to find her way to prestigious tournaments and winning games against privileged students from elite schools. Few people really liked Independence Day: Resurgence, but they watched it anyway. Those who do see Queen of Katwe, though, will experience something moving and enriching in a way that has become rare in Hollywood studio fare. It may be that more people saw the cartoony African tribesmen of the dark, dismal Independence Day: Resurgence this summer than will see the impoverished but colorful world of Katwe, the largest slum in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, in Mira NairвЂ™s fact-based film about real-life chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi, starring David Oyelowo ( Selma) and Lupita NyongвЂ™o ( 12 Years a Slave).

There are so many reasons Queen of Katwe shouldnвЂ™t even exist, and just thinking about them all makes me even more vexed at Hollywood for its desperate obsession with exhausted franchise fare when there are winning and wonderful stories like this to be told.

Queen of katwe amc