#Queen of katwe free for free#

When he says heвЂ™ll give her the goods for free if she offers him something gratis, she demonstrates what sheвЂ™d give him by spitting in the street.

She purchases it for resale from a stingy supplier. Harriet doesnвЂ™t grow the maize her children peddle or the vegetables she sells at her stall. This wily, intuitive director and her team, notably cinematographer Sean Bobbitt and editor Barry Alexander Brown, plunge us into KatweвЂ™s packed thoroughfares and alleyways, where PhionaвЂ™s mother, Harriet (Lupita NyongвЂ™o), sends her older children out to hawk husks of corn, waving them at the windows of potential buyers whose cars inch along the muddy streets. He then breaks character and steadies her by shouting, вЂњYou belong here.вЂќ HeвЂ™s not acting as an oracle but as a mentor who teaches her everything he knows he learns that she has talents far beyond his own.Д«etween victories and setbacks, WheelerвЂ™s script leaves Nair and her cast plenty of room to fill with unpredictable behavior. During a critical match, she breaks concentration and falters. William Wheeler, the screenwriter, working from a nonfiction book by Tim Crothers, engineers the ups, downs, and sideways motions of her ascent without making it seem easy or surrendering to glib statements about вЂњdestiny.вЂќ PhionaвЂ™s sturdy, sensitive coach, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), instructs her and his other students, a group he calls his вЂњPioneers,вЂќ on the necessity of devising a plan to conquer risks and obstacles in games and in life. She took up chess when she was 9 and, as Nair vividly chronicles, became an international competitor and national champion in her early teens. This surprisingly juicy film is based on the true story of Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a girl from Katwe, a sprawling, blighted district in UgandaвЂ™s capital, Kampala.

ItвЂ™s an elating achievement, and itвЂ™s all the more remarkable because she pulls it off in the context of an underdog sports movie. In Queen of Katwe, the director Mira Nair captures the vitality and improbable beauty of the dense, crowded street culture in an East African slum without sentimentalizing its people or underplaying their deprivations and hazards.