Hawa Hawaii
(Hawa Hawaii)

Hamedi, a Swahili wedding singer and part-time drag queen returns home to be by his dying mother’s side. Over the course of what turns out to be the last week he spends with her, he painfully finds closure from the wounds he’s been running away from all his life spent as a misfit in Mombasa and as a son who never could live up to his mother’s expectations. The film takes place over seven days during which the protagonist has to balance his mother’s worsening cancer condition and the culmination of his career of wedding singer. He discovers truths about his mother’s past, revisits painful memories from his childhood and channels his emotions through his one true love – music. Thus the sounds of popular ‘Taarab’ music, Bollywood love songs and old Egyptian orchestral music accent Hamedi’s island existence and, more importantly, his deeply fractured relationship with his mother, who violently shuns his drag-queen lifestyle and less-than-manly career choice. Hamedi tries to mend his relationship with his mother by communicating with her through these love songs.