Warriors, film review: Maasai elders, cricket, and female genital mutilation

This likeable and engaging documentary combines two themes which seem at first to have little to do with each both. It is partly about young Maasai warriors discovering cricket and partly about the fight between generations in the Maasai community against the traditional practice of female genital mutilation.

The elders insist that FGM should continue on the grounds that it is a long-established rite of passage and that women who don't have the "cut" won't be allowed to marry or be accepted within the community. The cricket team, which eventually comes to London to compete in a tournament, stands for modernity, youth and tolerance. Its players are prepared to challenge the elders about everything from FGM to HIV/Aids awareness.

There are a few too many tourist-eye views of the spectacular Kenyan landscapes and the animation is a distraction. Warriors, though, has a warmth and humour that a more polemical documentary on the same subject would surely have lacked.