CANNES, FRANCE—In Rafiki, the film that Kenya doesn’t want you to see, a lesbian romance begins with a chaste date to go out and have soda pop, just like stereotypical couples of the 1950s.

The story doesn’t get much more explicit than that. It hardly seems the stuff of outraged moral guardians, threats of jailing and an outright ban on the film in Kenya, especially in 2018.

Yet that is the current reality for Wanuri Kahiu’s bittersweet romancer, which was greeted with strong applause at its world premiere Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, as the first film from Kenya to be programmed in the fest’s Official Selection. It’s screening in the auteur-driven Un Certain Regard section, which has its own competition apart from the Palme d’Or contest.

The fact Rafiki even got out of Africa is no small feat, given how strongly moral and government authorities in Kenya have reacted to this affecting feature by Wanuri Kahiu (From a Whisper), which introduces charismatic teen leads played by Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva.

Gay sex is illegal in Kenya, punishable by 14 years in jail, due to a Victorian-era law still on the books that dates back to the country’s status as a British colony.

Kenya Film Classification Board head Ezekiel Mutua, the same guy who disputed reports last year of two male lions seen copulating on the Maasai Mara National Reserve (he declared they must be possessed by demons), has decreed that Rafiki wrongly normalizes gay sex and that it’s illegal in Kenya even to own a DVD copy of it.

This reaction is way over the top to a love story of energy and heart, powered by an Afro-pop soundtrack, that recalls thwarted love stories past from Romeo and Juliet on down.

Rafiki means “friend” in Swahili, a term familiar to gay couples everywhere who have been felt obliged to hide the real status of a romantic partner. Writer/director Kahiu and her co-writer Jenna Bass adapted Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko’s prize-winning 2007 short story “Jambula Tree” for the screenplay.

It’s love at first sight for teens Kena (Mugatsia) and Ziki (Munyiva) when they meet in their Nairobi housing estate, even though they aren’t an obvious match in many ways. Kena dresses and acts like a skate punk, even though she has ambitions to be a nurse, maybe even a doctor. She plays soccer with boys, who like her because she “plays like a guy.”

Ziki is a dancer in love with the rainbow, as you can tell from her multi-hued dreads and vivid dresses. She’s the more demonstrative of the two women, at first, but together they vow to “be something real” and not just accept the fate of most Kenyan girls, which is to marry men and have children.

Seriously complicating this love match is the fact that the fathers of Kena and Ziki are politicians opposing each other in an election — one bills himself as “A Man of Action” and the other as “The People’s Choice” — and neither wants the vote-losing scandal their daughters are creating.

To say that the mothers also object to the match is an understatement. Especially Kena’s divorced mother Mercy, a single mom who teaches religion and who considers homosexuality an offence in God’s eyes. Kena also has to put up with a macho male friend named Blacksta (Neville Misati), who care for her yet can’t understand why she wouldn’t be interested in him sexually.

Rafiki hardly breaks new narrative ground, but Kahiu’s fluid direction and wholly empathetic performances by Mugatsia and Munyiva make the movie special. It’s a good bet it will hit the fall festival circuit, with TIFF a likely stop.

What’s surprising about the film is how little sex there is in it, given the furore it has caused back home in Kenya. The lovemaking between Kena and Ziki is implied rather than shown — I think it could be shown uncut on airlines — and hard to imagine why the moral watchdogs of Kenya have their knickers in a knot about it.

Actually, it’s easy to imagine. It all comes down the problem of Kenya, and other African nations, to accept that two people of the same sex would choose to physically express their love for each other.

The real story of Rafiki is how it underlines the reality that even in the 21st century, LGBTQ rights are still far from universal.

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Denis Villeneuve is a virgin: Quebec film director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049) is taking his job as the Canadian member of Cate Blanchett’s Palme d’Or jury very seriously. He wants to see each film without any advance information or influence about it.

He’s hardcore about this, having gone through the Palme process on the either side, when his drug-war thriller Sicario premiered in competition here in 2015.

Villeneuve told me and other Toronto film journalists Wednesday, in an interview between jury screenings, that when clips of the 21 Palme contenders were shown on the big screen of the cavernous Lumière Theatre during Tuesday’s opening ceremonies, he declined to look.

“I didn’t watch. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see any images before (the films were shown in full). I really want to be totally like a virgin and to have the full impact of the movies without knowing anything about them.”

I’ll have more on Villeneuve’s interview later this week.

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