Queen of Katwe (5 Stars)

True Stories #40

Name: Phiona Mutesi

Lived: 28 March 1996 – still alive

Film dates: 2007 to 2012

Film made in 2016

This is the last film in my series of true stories. I left it till last not because it's the best film, but because it's the most moving. It shows how a young girl with everything stacked against her could succeed.

Phiona Mutesi was born in Katwe, a slum district in the city of Kampala, Uganda. Her father died when she was three, leaving her mother to bring up the remaining three children. When she was 10 she worked selling maize in the city. School was never an option. Only rich parents send their children to school. Her only hope was to marry a (relatively) rich man when she was 13.

There was a missionary centre in the slum. In addition to preaching the gospel, they taught children football or chess, whichever they preferred. They attracted children by giving them a bowl of porridge each day. That was a luxury.

Phiona was immediately drawn to chess when she was told that the Queen is the strongest piece. She had an innate sense of girl power, even in her pre-teen years. Within a year she was the missionary centre's strongest player. When she beat the older boys they either had a temper tantrum or sat in the corner crying.

Year by year, Phiona advanced. She won a chess championship in a prestigious boys school in Kampala. She was the best player in a junior African tournament in Sudan. Her first major setback was the Chess Olympiad in Russia when she was 14. She failed to qualify as a master, which disappointed her so much that she almost gave up chess.

The film ends with Phiona becoming the Ugandan chess champion at the age of 16. The real success is that she got out of the slum. She bought a house for herself and her family in a wealthy area of Kampala.

The grin on her face says it all.

It's heart-breaking to see the squalor of the slum and the child labour.

It's disgraceful that people should have to live in such conditions in the 21st Century.

The houses don't have running water, so the women have to go out to collect water.

That doesn't mean everyone in Uganda is poor. You can see the large buildings in the distance.

And yet Phiona did it. She made it out by herself. She's a role model for women of any age.