Achiro Patricia Olwoch
- Maeve Gleason
- Apr 21
- 3 min read
The Surrogate (2016)
Close Looking: Queer African Art and Family
Visual description:
The Surrogate is a short digital film, just under fourteen minutes long, shown in the Family section of Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art. The film is spoken in Acholi, a language of northern Uganda, with English subtitles. It was shot in Gulu and relies heavily on close-up framing, which gives the work an intense emotional immediacy.
The film opens with a confrontation between a mother and daughter. The mother yells at her daughter, accusing her of dishonoring the family. Timestamps appear in the corners of the screen, signaling shifts in time and framing parts of the story as flashback.
We are introduced to Achan, a young woman who meets Frank at a bar. She later becomes pregnant with his child, believing they may build a life together. Over time, it becomes clear that Frank and Johnnie, Achan’s friend, are in a relationship and want a child of their own. As Achan realizes she has been used, the emotional pressure around her intensifies.
The film stays close to faces and gestures, emphasizing distress, fear, and conflict. By the end, after a final moment of violence, Achan is left lying on the ground, seemingly dead.
Context:
Achiro Patricia Olwoch is a Ugandan writer, director, and producer from Gulu who now lives in exile in New York. Her work often connects personal experience, political history, and the realities of life under social pressure. She has described The Surrogate as being based on a true story and on what is happening in society around both unmarried young women and homosexuals.
In a 2018 conversation about the film, Olwoch explained that she wanted to show how “pushing people against the wall will cause them to go over the edge.” That statement is important to this work. The Surrogate does not treat gender, sexuality, and family as separate issues. Instead, it shows how they intersect under conditions of fear and social control.
The film also has to be understood within Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ climate, which has deep roots in colonial law and remains intense in the present. This context gives the film its urgency. To represent queer relationships, reproductive pressure, and social shame within such an environment is both politically risky and artistically bold.
Interpretation:
The film presents family as a source of pressure as much as care. Achan’s mother is not simply harsh. She also seems afraid, aware of the danger surrounding her daughter’s pregnancy and her connection to Frank and Johnnie. This makes the family structure in the film feel complicated rather than one-dimensional.
The close-up cinematography intensifies that feeling. The viewer is kept physically close to the characters, often with little room to breathe. This creates a sense of emotional confinement, as though everyone is trapped within systems they did not choose.
The relationship between Achan, Frank, and Johnnie also complicates conventional ideas of family. Their situation is shaped by manipulation and secrecy, but also by a desperate attempt to make a life under conditions that deny queer people legitimacy and safety. The film does not excuse anyone’s actions, but it does ask the viewer to think about what kinds of choices become imaginable when people are forced into impossible positions.
In this sense, The Surrogate expands the theme of family by showing it as unstable, fraught, and shaped by larger systems of power. Family here is not only a place of belonging. It can also be a place of judgment, silence, and danger.
Reflect and Explore
In what ways is the idea of family represented in The Surrogate? What harmful forms of family are shown, and what more supportive or family-like connections can also be seen?
How does the film’s use of close-up framing shape your experience of the characters and their emotions?
What role do timestamps and flashbacks play in how the story unfolds?
Do you think Frank’s actions can be understood, or even justified, in light of the severe social constraints he and Johnnie face? Why or why not?
Learn More
Artist & Primary Sources
Achiro Patricia Olwoch, “In Conversation”
Artistic Freedom Initiative, “Achiro P. Olwoch”
Further Resources
Artists at Risk Connection, “Achiro P. Olwoch”
Human Rights Watch, “They’re Putting Our Lives at Risk”
Contextual Reading
Reporting and scholarship on Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ climate and its effects on women, queer people, and family life
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