“In a bid to see a reflection of himself on film, he fought for that story to be told – that’s why this miracle of this film happening at this company has come to pass.” “He walked that film up and down the halls of the biggest media company in the world for a few years,” Oyelowo says. What he quickly realized, though, is that Queen of Katwe was a passion project for Tendo Nagenda, Disney’s executive vice-president of production, who is of Ugandan descent. “So it’s the most unlikely game, with the most unlikely girl, in the most unlikely place,” Oyelowo says.ĭavid Oyelowo and Madina Nalwanga star in Disney’s Queen of Katwe, the vibrant true story of a young girl from the streets of rural Uganda whose world rapidly changes when she is introduced to the game of chess. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o plays her mother, and Oyelowo is her coach. Queen of Katwe is the true story of 11-year-old Phiona (newcomer Madina Nalwanga), a wallflower who lives in a Ugandan slum, but who has a prodigious, natural talent for chess. But Queen of Katwe is a transcendent, joyful, hopeful, self-possessed, self-motivated story that we don’t see told about Africa, certainly not in a studio film.” (Oyelowo’s other TIFF film, A United Kingdom, a true, interracial love story set in 1947, also takes a fresh look at Africa.) “Cinematically, Africa is often portrayed to be all doom and gloom. “I kept saying, ‘Did Disney not get the memo as to what this film is and has to be, who it’s about, where it’s set?’ ” he continues. When the actor David Oyelowo ( Selma) read the script for his latest film, Queen of Katwe, which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night, he wasn’t nervous that it was being made by Disney – “I was shocked,” he said in a phone interview prior to his arrival in Toronto.