The First Grader

The First Grader (2010) is Justin Chadwick's drama about stubborn, late-life hope, and you can watch online on iFILM. An 84-year-old man turns up at a rural Kenyan primary school, asking to be enrolled in first grade.

Kenya, 2003: the government promises free primary schooling for every citizen. Among the crowd at the gate stands Kimani Maruge, a former Mau Mau fighter who has carried an unread government letter for decades because he never learned his letters. Teacher Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris) fights to seat him among the six-year-olds, even as officials and furious parents push back.

The man was real: Maruge actually started school in old age and entered the Guinness records as the oldest person ever to begin primary education. Oliver Litondo plays him, and Chadwick shot in a working school with local children, many facing a film camera for the first time. It's a quiet film, free of melodrama, about a hunger to learn that ignores age — and about the scars Kenya's colonial past left across its villages. Stream The First Grader (2010) online on iFILM.