JOHANNESBURG — “Black Panther” has burst onto the screen in Africa, handing a powerful response to the unfortunate remarks about the continent by President Donald Trump.
As the red carpet in South Africa swirled with stunning outfits and exclamations in the local isiXhosa language used in the film’s Wakanda kingdom, cast member John Kani laughed at the U.S. president’s views, which several African nations have openly scorned.
The South African actor Kani, like many at Friday night’s Johannesburg premiere, expressed pride at seeing an Afrofuturistic society that celebrates traditional cultures and dreams of what the world’s second most populous continent can be.
“This time the sun now is shining on Africa,” he said. “This movie came at the right time. We’re struggling to find leaders that are exemplary and role models … so when you see the Black Panther as a young boy and he takes off that mask you think, ‘Oh my God, he looks like me. He is African and I am African. Now we can look up to some person who is African.'”
Added actress Danai Gurira, who grew up mostly in Zimbabwe: “To bring this film home is everything.”
The film has opened in other top economic powers across Africa, where a growing middle class flocked to IMAX showings and shared vibrant opening-night images on social media.
“The African culture highlighted in the movie is so rich that it makes me feel proud of being black. I totally love it,” said Liz Muthoni after a screening in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
“Black Panther” screened a few days ago in Kenya’s western city of Kisumu, where Nyong’o’s father, Anyang, is the local governor.
“Sometimes we think that we have two choices to make in Africa,” he wrote this month in The Star newspaper. “Choice one: We maintain our traditions and cultures and stay backward forever. Choice two: We modernize by becoming westernized and forgetting our cultural traditions which, by their very nature so we think, are stuck in the past. The experience of the Wakanda people teaches us otherwise.”
As the audience poured out of the Johannesburg screening, spirits were high.
“Totally blown away. I got emotional,” said reality TV star Blue Mbombo, who admitted that going into the film she thought the expectations had been “hype.” But she praised its use of cultural touches like Basotho blankets and called the use of the isiXhosa language “very humbling.”
