This Kenyan Documentary Explores a Gay Man’s Journey to Love and Acceptance

Filmmakers Peter Murimi and Toni Kamau chat with me on the making of I Am Samuel

I Am Samuel, a new observational documentary by Kenyan journalist and filmmaker Peter Murimi, details a gay man’s journey to love and acceptance. Filmed over five years, the documentary explores the titular character’s relationship with romantic partner Alex and friendships within the queer community in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi where he finds belonging in spite of threats of violence all around the city. The film is also a portrait of Samuel’s relationship with his parents, especially his father. 

The older man is a pastor in a small rural community in Kenya, where Samuel had grown up working with him as subsistence farmers. Just like most African fathers, Samuel’s father expects his son to be in a heterosexual marriage and even pressurises him to do so, going as far as building him a home next to his where he wants him to raise and nurture a family. When the man discovers that his son is in a romantic relationship with Alex, whom he had assumed to be a platonic friend, he severs ties with him. It takes months before Samuel’s father comes to terms with his son’s sexuality and invites him home. I Am Samuel ends on this heartwarming, optimistic note.

The documentary is currently showing on Apple TV in the US and UK. However, weeks to its premiere on AfriDocs, a streaming platform for African documentaries, the Kenyan Film Classification Board restricted it from viewing in the country. Their reason: They found the film to be an intentional advocacy tool for the normalisation of same-sex relationships and marriages which goes against Article 165 of the country’s penal code. This isn’t the first time this has happened. In 2018, the internationally acclaimed Kenyan film Rafiki about a lesbian couple and how they navigate their relationship in their homophobic community was banned because of its positive depiction of same-sex relationships.

I chatted with the director Peter Murimi and producer Toni Kamau and we discussed the making of this phenomenal film and their thoughts on the censors board’s decision to restrict their film.

My first question, of course, is how did you meet Samuel? How did you gain his and Alex’s trust for the film?

Peter Murimi: When I decided to make this film about the experience of being queer in Africa, in this case, Kenya, it was due to the experience of someone really close to me who is queer, whose parents were struggling with accepting him. So I wanted to make a film that was very relevant to that situation. I started looking around to see if I could meet the right character and through mutual friends I was introduced to Samuel. And I remember, within five minutes of pitching the story to him and detailing its importance, he just said, “I am very interested in telling my story.” And one of the things he was saying was that when he was much younger when he was in his early teens, he was having this very big internal conflict about who he is and his sexuality. He didn’t know a grown man could be queer. He didn’t have an example. So for him, it felt really important to tell his story, especially for people from his background because he was brought up in the countryside and had no access to a Television until he became an adult. He had very little connection with the rest of the world growing up. And he wanted to set an example for people like him, people who come from a similar background and are queer. So that was his motivation. And I had my motivation. It’s two people who came together and went on this journey trying to make the film. 

The thing with trust: it takes time. But the more we committed to the course, the more we started trusting each other and slowly he introduced me to his world. And you know with everything with access, it depends on who brought you in. So when Samuel introduced me to his partner Alex, that had a lot of weight. Alex gave me a chance. And I had to prove myself with commitment and time, and so with his family and friends.

There aren’t many films documenting the experiences of being queer in Africa, why did you choose to narrow the story to just Samuel and his relationships? 

PM: To me, I’d say it’s the motivation because I was looking to be very representative of what it means to be queer in Africa and I believed that could be achieved through a person because our lives are very three dimensional. And just focusing on Samuel, we were able to explore all those aspects. The father-son relationship is an interesting aspect to explore, it doesn’t matter what the sexual orientation is, it's something we can all relate to. I think this is very important for audiences, and especially in Africa where queer stories are rarely told, to see all these connection points and see how much we have in common than not in common. So I thought that by making it very personal, I could also bring in the empathy more. 

You shot for five years. What was it like and when did you realise you had enough material for a cohesive story?

Toni Kamau: Because we were first-time filmmakers, we went through different journeys where we thought we had arrived at an ending. But remember we were filming with someone for five years so we did have many versions of the documentary. For example, one that ended before Alex and Samuel got engaged. But then consulting with different editors... We had this amazing editor Ricardo Acosta, who is queer and Cuban. Consulting with him on the edits just helped us figure out what the heart of the story was and that the core was the relationship with the father. So I think after we filmed for like some years, you know Samuel met Alex, fell in love, and when Samuel and his father had the disagreement and then started talking again. You know that was when we felt we’d reached a point where we had to create a film because we felt like we had some sort of conclusion where there was some sort of acceptance of Samuel by his dad. We thought it would be great to end the story on a point of hope and optimism. 

PM: You know, every time you are filming, you are asking yourself, where are we in the narrative? Am I seeing the emotional arch? The development of some work? I think when Samuel had made peace with “this is as far as my father can go”, I think I knew that this was the end. This is the conclusion of what we are looking at. Because they had had their conflict and this is the resolution: the father had found a way to co-exist. I was thinking that the emotional journey was complete and that’s where I think I was ready to go for the edits and try and make this film.

How were you able to access funding through the years of production? 

TK: There are different ways of funding projects; one is the independent documentary grants, where you apply for a grant. You could have a project idea, you submit a proposal, you share some material, and then you go through a selection process where they look at the quality of the work, whether it sits within the call of the year, that's in terms of what they are looking for. For instance, is it a fund that wants to support African filmmakers? They have different criteria and an example of such funding is Docubox which is based in Kenya. There’s also DocA, which is Pan-African. There's the Sundance Documentary Fund which gives grants globally. There’s Hot Docs- Blue Ice Fund which gives grants to African filmmakers. There are these different organisations that give funds to filmmakers who submit grant applications. We had to apply at every stage of production.

How did Samuel’s parents feel about a camera observing their day-to-day life?

PM: During the introduction, they were like “ah, okay.” There was a bit of distance initially but with time, I earned their trust and they forgot I was there. There were times when I felt like I was part of the furniture. Nobody was even paying attention to me. So let’s say the advantage of time is that people forget that you exist. That was what it was for me in that situation.

And there wasn’t a second cinematographer?

PM: In principal [photography], there was only one cinematographer but sometimes, there were events that happened when I had traveled and I would send someone to film in my place. But I filmed almost everything on my own. Because of the sensitivity of the topic, the smaller you are as a crew, the better, and I just found a way of shooting one person at a time.

Did the parents know what you were aiming for with the film?

PM: The thing is, as you can tell from the film, it’s somewhere in the middle of the film that the parents confront Samuel about Alex. And it was around that time that it became clear that this would also be an LGBT film in a sense. Me and Samuel’s father and mother had this deep talk and I let them know that Samuel being gay is part of the film. And it was very difficult for them and we didn’t talk for a while. But after five months they accepted that I continue filming. When the film was finished, they watched it before it was released so that they can have a rough idea of what it is about and how they come across. They’ve watched and approved that we share it with the world.

Did you expect the ban by the Kenyan censors board? The film is supposed to be available across Africa on the AfriDocs platform, but I’m wondering if it’s geo-blocked in Kenya?

PM: Yes. It’s geo-blocked in Kenya now because of the ban. And in terms of LGBTQ+ films, this is the third film being banned. Before Rafiki, there was a Kenyan film called Stories of Our Lives. I was a bit optimistic because, unlike Rafiki and Stories of Our Lives, which were fictional films with scripts and actors, I Am Samuel is a documentary. I thought that because I am a well-known journalist and broadcaster, it could be treated differently from those films, that it would be treated like my other projects. That is what I thought but I was wrong.

The ban has surely created controversy and a media frenzy in Kenya. I am bothered about Samuel and his parent’s safety and wellbeing. How are they? 

PM: During the filming, safety was one of our biggest concerns and building up to the release we had come up with a safety plan. And because of that, I wouldn’t want us to talk about our safety plan. But we have a safety plan and everyone is safe and sound.

Watch I Am Samuel here: https://youtu.be/t3bzIbJHajo

Director/Producer: Peter Murimi 

Peter Murimi is a multiple award-winning Kenyan TV documentary director focusing on hard-hitting social issues, from extra-judicial killings to prostitution. He recently won the 2019 Rory Peck award for a news feature about suicide. His first major win was the CNN Africa Journalist of the Year Award for his intimate documentary about Female Genital Mutilation among his Kuria community, “Walk to Womanhood” (2004).  Another ground-breaking project was the film “Slum Survivors” (2007), filmed in the Kenyan capital, which won an award at the Czech Tur Ostrava film festival. Peter was a producer/ director for Al Jazeera's Africa Investigates strand, which exposes crime and corruption, with credits including "Spell of the Albino" (2011) and  "Zimbabwe's Child Exodus" (2011). Another Al Jazeera film, "Kenya's Enemy Within" (2015),, revealed the terror threat posed by homegrown al Shabaab Somali militants to Kenya. "I am Samuel"is his feature directorial debut, filmed verite style for five years in his home country.

Producer — Toni Kamau 

Toni Kamau is the youngest female African documentary producer to be invited as a member of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences - Documentary Branch, class of 2020. As a creative producer, director and founder of "We are not the machine Ltd", a Kenyan based production company, she tells stories of outsiders, rebels and change makers. Her past credits include half hour documentaries for Al Jazeera, MTV Europe and BBC Africa.  The Sundance special jury prize winner “Softie”, produced by Toni and directed/produced by Sam Soko, premiered at Sundance in 2020 in the World Cinema Documentary Feature Competition. “I am Samuel”, directed by Rory Peck 2019 winner Pete Murimi is her second feature as producer, and it recently had its world premiere at the 2020 edition of Hot Docs, to strong reviews. She is currently in production on a documentary feature exploring home and belonging and in development on a series that tackles decolonizing narratives about the global South.