Emily Atef's 'Call me Queen' Brings Kenyan AIDS Activist Story to Cinema

Emily Atef's new film 'Call me Queen' adapts Lara Santoro's novel 'Mercy', based on true events, centering on a Kenyan woman with AIDS who becomes a leader in the fight against the pharmaceutical industry. Atef was drawn to the story because it focuses on the power of ordinary people and the agency of those affected, rather than just their suffering. She and her co-writers shifted the narrative to put a woman from the slums at the center, a figure who asserts herself from the start, including in her friendship with an Irish journalist named Anna. Eliane Umuhire, who plays Queen, was attracted to the character's three-dimensionality, her anger, and her imperfection. Umuhire emphasized the importance of telling the story from Queen's perspective, not Anna's, and noted that for years African stories have been told by outsiders. She sees the friendship between Queen and Anna as a metaphor for solidarity, which she insists must be more than a utopia. The film was shot in Nairobi with a crew largely composed of locals, which is unusual for a European production. Atef explained that while European funding rules typically require a significant European crew, they could not tell an African story with a European team, especially given the theme of emancipation of the Global South. The story is set in the 1990s, and Atef noted that every person on set had their own AIDS story. The interview was conducted by Matthias Jordan and published on kulturnews.de.