FILM
An Interview with Director Peter Murimi THEO SMITH
An intimate and inspirational documentary, I Am Samuel tells the brave story of Samuel and Alex who fall in love and handle the pressures surrounding Kenya’s law and loyalty towards his family’s needs. As it’s playing at the London Film Festival, I spoke with the film’s director Peter Murimi where we discuss about the film itself, the challenges that he faced when filming it, and what it means for it to be playing at the festival. What is the film about, and how did you UP come with the idea of it? It’s a film about love and resilience, and hopefully when you watch it, you know what it’s really like for a gay man in Kenya. The idea came from a very personal place: there’s someone really close to me who’s gay and they were really struggling with their family at the time. So, I remember we were brainstorming, and I was like ‘If only there’s a documentary that when the parents watch it, they’ll really understand what’s going on’. At the time, we couldn’t come up with a clever documentary, so I said that we’ll make one as a story. That’s when through a mutual friend, during my research, I got introduced to Samuel. I told him about the idea, and he said he always wanted to do this because when he was younger, he didn’t know any grown-up who was gay, and always thought something was wrong like, ‘I’m the only gay man in the world’. He said, ‘I wanted to do it for the generation behind me, and that they can see a gay man who’s from a village in Kenya’. Leading on from that, what drew you towards Samuel’s story? What I also found very interesting about Samuel, especially back home in Kenya, is that society tends to put people in boxes - if you’re gay, then they think you’re automatically not Christian, or your African roots are not as strong. But for Samuel, you can say he’s traditional, he’s conservative in his political leaning, he’s very religious, and he’s gay. So, in a sense, he was going against this rule that society has of boxing people, and I found that very fascinating. At the start of the film, it says that homosexual activity is illegal in Kenya. As well as Samuel’s story, was that something you also wanted to address? Not really and in a sense, that’s why we chose to show that right at the start. We felt it was important to give the context of the world setting. Part of that is the law,
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which is repressing, and the next thing is the society, that’s where we see the clip of Samuel’s friend being beaten. But after that, what’s really important was his relationship with his father and Alex, but also his life - where does he work and how does he live? To me, those were the things that I really wanted to focus on because, especially in Kenya where there’s almost nothing about the narrative of a gay man onscreen, I just wanted to have as many connection points to show there’s a lot of similarities with any other Kenyan. He has a job, he goes to Church, he has a lover, who’s a man, but still has a relationship that’s really strong and sweet. That, for me, was the focus of the film. You shot this over five years, how did you edit it to make it feel like a cohesive narrative? Basically, the father’s story is the spine of the film. When you look at every other thing happening, Samuel’s relationship with Alex is constant: they love each other at the beginning, and they love each other at the end. The only thing that advances their relationship is when they get engaged. However, the father begins the film by saying ‘I want my son to have a wife’. But at the end, he has to manage and deal with the fact that his son is gay. So, the father’s narrative arc is what guided us in and somewhat shaped the final outcome. You filmed it in a verité-style, and there are moments where you know more behind the camera than Samuel’s family does. How were you able to stay unobtrusive? During the filming, it was really important for it to be really intimate. In that sense, at the beginning it’s like, ‘I’m going on this journey with Samuel’, and Samuel is the first person who was on board with the film. But the next hurdle was bringing the rest of Samuel’s world into this narrative that we’re making, and essentially, we built it brick by brick. I started with Samuel, then Alex, and then the next level was to bring the family on board. But, how do you achieve that without bringing a catalyst for conflict? So, I had to form my own relationship with the parents and document what was happening. But when the father fell out with Samuel and Alex when he discovered their relationship, he also fell out with me. Oh really? Yeah! And when the reconciliation happened, there was also a reconciliation that I had behind the scenes.
