We Will Be Who We Are

Director Statement

Unlike what a lot of contemporary news from most of Africa preach, African gender identities have always been fluid. A fluidity departing from the mainstream binary understanding of gender identities and documented in the lives of many of our ancestors as well as in ancient African indigenous traditions and beliefs. Yet as legacies of colonization have influenced the understanding of our African identities and set the grounds for today’s banning of queer identities, erasing our fluid pasts, including in Sierra Leone, west Africa.

We Will Be Who We Are introduces us to best friends, Aya and Boi, who marry as a way to resist society’s expectations as to who they can be. We Will be Who We Are is the lyrical but urgent call to reclaim who we should always have been.