When watching “Nawi,” two things quickly become clear. First, a great lead performance carries the film. Michelle Lemuya Ekene plays the eponymous character, a 13-year-old girl who longs to go to high school but instead must confront the patriarchal traditions of her community. She is to be married off in exchange for a large dowry of cattle. Second, the creative team of Toby Schmutzler, Kevin Schmutzler, Valentin Cheloge, and Abu Morin are so intent on making a salient point about child marriage that they rob the film of its cinematic and entertainment value. In shifting the focus to their political statement, the four directors fail to give the lead actress the exposure her powerful performance demands.
Selected to represent Kenya at the Oscars, “Nawi” is set in the rural Turkana region in the northern part of the East African country. It is based on true events and begins with the steadfast and hardworking young heroine who obtains the highest scores in her high school entrance exams. While her teacher and friends celebrate her, and while a TV news crew interviews her about her academic achievements, her father, Eri (Ochonjo Benson), plans to marry her off to a much older man.
As the only daughter in her family, it falls to her to save them and sacrifice herself so that the dowry paid can help support them. As she writes in her diary and the audience hears it in voiceover, the price is “60 sheep, eight camels, and 100 goats.” “No more, no less.”
Before the wedding, the film spends time showing Naoi’s patriarchal family structure and the complex relationships within it. As the head of the family, Eri has two wives: Ekai (Nongo Marian Akinyi) and Rosemary (Michelle Chebet Therrien). Nawi was born to Rosemary, his second and youngest wife. These early scenes create real drama and tension in the family. Both women believe that Nawi’s place is that of a wife and mother, fully committed to the traditions of their community.
Ikai is frank and realistic about this, while Rosemary lovingly tries to convince Naoi to see the bright side, believing that she could end up with a daughter who is just as smart as she did. The mother-daughter dynamic is warmly portrayed, and the actors show palpable emotion that explains how Naoi has grown to be so brave and graceful – she has had so much love and support. Additionally, Nawi has a touching and hilarious relationship with her brother Joel (Joel Lewan), even if they have different mothers.
Throughout this buildup, Ekenye holds the film together with a performance rich with emotional clarity. The directors chose to play many scenes on her face, capturing her reactions to everything that unfolds in many close-ups. Ikeny is always watchable and manages to silently convey what her character is feeling. For such a young actress, she comfortably and effortlessly does what some actors take decades to do: fill the frame and single-handedly elevate the artistic quality of their film.
Even as the screenplay runs out of ideas and resorts to obvious melodrama, Ekene remains the only reason to engage with Nawi. The character goes through a lot: she runs away, tries to get to Nairobi, becomes a mentor and teacher to a group of boys her age, and has to make many crucial decisions. Throughout this long journey, Ekenye shows Nawi as simultaneously brave, defiant, frightened, and lost. Both character and actor mature on screen and show real grit and conviction.
However, even Ekenne’s performance cannot save the film once it reaches its end. Where it begins as a character study, “Nawi” fades into a fairly routine commercial. The film loses artistic merit and dramatic credibility because it desperately tries to make a point about child marriage. While this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and loudly amplified to the public, such an obvious approach is not the way the issue should be addressed on screen.
Filmmakers resort to unconventional methods, such as asking the actor to address the camera, and in the process they forget their main character and the story they are retelling. The filmmakers clearly had good intentions, collaborating with several NGOs to tell the story, but the film ultimately became nothing more than an educational tool – something that could have come directly from one of these humanitarian institutions.