A new film explores what it means to be queer in Kenya today

I Am Samuel tells the sto­ry of a young gay Kenyan man who moves to the cap­i­tal, Nairo­bi, vivid­ly cap­tured in the fre­net­ic ener­gy of its busy mar­ket places, traf­fic-filled streets and cramped apart­ments. ​“It’s an over­crowd­ed city, a bit claus­tro­pho­bic, but it’s also where Samuel gets to be who he real­ly is and finds his cir­cle of friends,” says direc­tor Peter Muri­mi, who spent five years chron­i­cling the lives of Samuel, his part­ner Alex, their cho­sen queer fam­i­ly in Nairo­bi, and Samuel’s bio­log­i­cal fam­i­ly back home.

Samuel migrates to find a future that he is unable to pur­sue in his native vil­lage, which is con­trast­ed against the city by lin­ger­ing aer­i­al shots depict­ing rich earth tones, sweep­ing fields and an almost med­i­ta­tive monot­o­ny of dai­ly chores. ​“The vil­lage is beau­ti­ful, it’s expan­sive, but that’s where Samuel strug­gles the most with his par­ents,” adds Muri­mi. ​“There is a lot of ten­sion. [The film] is a lot about what you see, not what is said. It’s about the body language.”

Murimi’s moti­va­tions for telling this sto­ry are some­what per­son­al. ​“The same gay dynam­ic Samuel is going through hap­pened to some­one real­ly close to me,” he explains; as ​“some­one who can be very use­ful to such fam­i­lies, it would be inter­est­ing for par­ents to under­stand their child and also some­times for chil­dren to under­stand their parents.”

As well as show­ing how Samuel chal­lenges tra­di­tion­al ideas of what it means to be a gay man, it was impor­tant to Muri­mi to depict the strug­gles that addi­tion­al oppres­sion, such as pover­ty, adds to an already pre­car­i­ous exis­tence. ​“There is the issue of LGBTQ+ rights, and there is also a class issue, because if you are mid­dle class that buys you some protection.”

Samuel has none of that safe­ty, yet he must live his life regard­less. He works a con­struc­tion job while pur­su­ing his dream of coach­ing net­ball, a pas­sion passed on to Samuel by his moth­er. He is devot­ed to his faith, which some might assume would stand in oppo­si­tion to his sex­u­al­i­ty, stat­ing ​“we embrace reli­gion as much as you do, but we are still queer”. He sur­rounds him­self with a group of queer friends, and with­in the con­fines of their safe space – Samuel’s apart­ment, adorned with rain­bow flags – they each find release. And in Alex, Samul finds the love of his life. ​“We saw our­selves in each oth­er,” he reflects, ​“we belong together.”

Inter­pret­ing things in her own way, Samuel’s moth­er refers to her son and Alex as ​“twins”. The rela­tion­ship with his fam­i­ly is inte­gral to Samuel’s mul­ti­fac­eted life. Muri­mi observes: ​“He got the least pres­sure from the women in the fam­i­ly so he was allowed to be him­self, relaxed, loos­en­ing up. But with his father, there was so much ten­sion, you could tell from their body lan­guage.” The lev­i­ty Samuel is afford­ed when he’s with Alex is also present with these women; we catch glimpses of Samuel being momen­tar­i­ly unbur­dened by expec­ta­tions of masculinity.

As we watch Samuel and his father observ­ing the world around them, there is some solace in the way they mir­ror one anoth­er. The two men are often slight­ly with­drawn, silent­ly watch­ing oth­ers. Accord­ing to Muri­mi, ​“Most of the time Samuel is the one peo­ple go to for reas­sur­ance in the group. But when peo­ple are sit­ting and talk­ing in a group he will be one like, ​‘I know who I am. I’m com­fort­able with myself. I don’t need to prove any­thing, I’ll just sit and watch the world.’” In this way, Samuel inad­ver­tent­ly ful­fils his father’s patri­ar­chal expec­ta­tions – watch­ing over his own non-tra­di­tion­al family.

Accord­ing to Muri­mi, Samuel’s moti­va­tion for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the film was to pro­vide a role mod­el to young peo­ple like him­self, so they might say, ​“I know some­one liv­ing open­ly as a gay man and I’m gay and there’s noth­ing wrong with me.” Muri­mi is con­scious of his role as an ally, some­one out­side of the com­mu­ni­ty with a plat­form and an abil­i­ty to shift con­ver­sa­tions about the lives of fre­quent­ly mis­un­der­stood peo­ple with their input. ​“I think I’m an ally; even dur­ing the mak­ing of the film I used to show the cut and share the footage, so they also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the feed­back. It was a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort.”

I Am Samuel belongs to a wider move­ment of films fight­ing for LGBTQ+ rights. As a result, there is a very real fear that it will be banned, like pre­vi­ous Kenyan LGBTQ+ films, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to access for those who need it most. How­ev­er, Muri­mi remains opti­mistic, buoyed by the pos­i­tive recep­tion to the film at var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals. ​“They’re get­ting so much love, get­ting so much admi­ra­tion, which is real­ly good for them.”