Wanuri Kahiu

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an event widely considered a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named her one of the Pride50 "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".

Kahiu's 2018 film Rafiki ("Friend") received funding by the Netherlands Film Fund. The production company is Big World Cinema, a South African company supporting young African filmmakers. The production team came from Kenya, France, and the Netherlands. Rafiki chronicles the story of two Kenyan girls who fall in love with each other and struggle to navigate this love with their families in a homophobic society. In an interview with Olivier Barlet, Kahiu says that she chose to adapt Ugandan author Monica Arac de Nyeko's short story "Jambula Tree", due to its "texture and nuances" in the taboo love story. Homosexuality in Africa has long been debated, but Kahiu tells Olivier Barlet that homophobia is not of the spirit of Ubuntu since it marginalizes people in the community. Above all, Kahiu finished her interview with Olivier Barlet by saying that she hopes the upcoming film will portray a "normal love story" that acknowledges the heroic challenges of choosing a "difficult love". In addition, Kahiu discusses in an NPR interview with Sacha Pfeiffer how her films are not necessarily meant to be political, how she does not create them for that purpose, but they are "deemed political" because of her race and gender. She goes on to lament how unfortunate it is "that sometimes that when two people are in love, the moment that you change the gender and the race of the people in love, it becomes increasingly political" and that is all audiences and critics tend to see. The film was selected to premiere at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and was the first Kenyan film to screen at the festival where it received a standing ovation, but was banned in Kahiu's home country of Kenya due to its controversial themes. It was shown at the 2018 London Film Festival.

Kahiu has critiqued the ways in which Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) control the popular imagination of Africa. She has expressed that how you get money to be able to be a filmmaker in Kenya is through making films about whatever NGOs are funding – films that are about AIDS or female genital mutilation. These images, Kahiu says, reconstitute Africa as the Other.

According to literature scholar Mich Nyawalo, Pumzi (2009) challenges the pessimistic representation of African realities and futures by using the aesthetics of Afrofutirism to demonstrate African-led creativity. It depicts the story of a young botanist Asha, thirty five years after World War III (aka the water war). Asha discovers life outside of her post-apocalyptic underground community. In her protectionist community, members must take dream suppressants to quiet hopes of a better future. Mitch Nyawalo argues that Pumzi's destruction parallels the economic devastation in the aftermath of the World Bank's structural adjustment programs. The film also displays an "ecofemninst critical posture" where women are most affected by environment devastation but also are at the forefront of bettering their societies.

Her first feature film, From a Whisper (2008), received a total of 12 nominations and earned five awards at the 5th Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009. The film fictionalizes the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. It tells the story of a young girl, Tamani, who loses her mother in the attack and is told by her father that her mother is missing when she is actually deceased. Tamani searches for her mother, painting hearts across the city, she also befriends a policeman named Abu. Abu helps Tamani as the viewers discover the shame he feels for not stopping his friend who helped attack the embassy. Film scholar, Clara Giruzzi highlights Kahiu's display of an African feminist sensibility, displayed by the egalitarian relationships in the film, and the pacifist messages in the wake of national trauma, which challenge essentialist and universalist western perspectives of Africa.

Kahiu was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She currently lives between Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya. In an interview with Vogue Italia, the filmmaker describes herself as a black sheep to her conservative parents; her mother is a doctor and her father a businessman. Yet, her aunt is a famous actress in Kenya and her uncle is a sculptor. At the age of 16, Kahiu says she decided to become a filmmaker. After graduating from the University of Warwick in 2001 with a BSc degree in Management Science, she obtained a Masters of Fine Arts degree in production/directing at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theatre, Film and Television. Kahiu worked on The Italian Job (2003) and Phillip Noyce's Catch a Fire (2006).

Wanuri Kahiu (born 21 June 1980) is a Kenyan film director, producer, and author. She has received several awards and nominations for the films which she directed, including the awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2009 for her dramatic feature film From a Whisper. She is also the co-founder of AFROBUBBLEGUM, a media collective dedicated to supporting African art.