Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6705
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Hakeem Kae-Kazim works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Hakeem Kae-Kazim appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Hakeem. Nganù is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for action, mystery, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Per Fly, Adam Wingard, Ashley Avis and others, Hakeem Kae-Kazim helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Nganù (2023) · Riding with Sugar (2020) as Mambo · Hotel Rwanda (2004) as George Rutaganda
Career snapshot
Ranked #6705 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2004–2025
Career length
21 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Nganù
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.5
Nganù
Most frequent director
Per Fly
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Per Fly
Most common genre
Action
7 titles
Average runtime
1h 51m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.5
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
7.0 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Fourth Kind, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
7.0
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Fourth Kind, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
Most productive era
2020s
9 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.61 film | — | 6.15 films |
| Action | 7.02 films | 6.01 film | 5.04 films |
| Thriller | 6.41 film | 6.01 film | 6.42 films |
| Comedy | — | — | 5.11 film |
| Horror | — | — | 5.11 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2004Hotel Rwanda
Where our catalogue meets this career, as George Rutaganda.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2023Nganù
8.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Detective Thorne.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
14 of 14 films
as George Rutaganda
Directed by Terry George
as Admiral Wilcox
Directed by Adam Wingard
as Captain Jocard
Directed by Gore Verbinski
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Nganù
Nganù (2023)
Performance score8.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The role gives Hakeem Kae-Kazim a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mambo
Riding with Sugar (2020)
Performance score8.3
Riding with Sugar asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mambo is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
George Rutaganda
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Performance score7.7
Hotel Rwanda asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. George Rutaganda is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Admiral Wilcox
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
Performance score7.3
Godzilla vs. Kong asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Admiral Wilcox is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
Start here. Nganù is the clearest statement of what Hakeem Kae-Kazim does — accessible, 101 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Hakeem at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Keeps the drama register of Nganù but asks for a colder reading of it.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
A deliberate change of key after Hotel Rwanda — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Riding with Sugar (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Riding with Sugar — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Terry George
Director
1 film together
Notably Hotel Rwanda
Gore Verbinski
Director
1 film together
Notably Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Olatunde Osunsanmi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fourth Kind
Gavin Hood
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Sunu Gonera
Director
1 film together
Notably Riding with Sugar
Ashley Avis
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Beauty
Adam Wingard
Director
1 film together
Notably Godzilla vs. Kong
Per Fly
Director
1 film together
Notably Hammarskjöld: Fight for Peace
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Sunu Gonera
Director
1 film together · 8.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Riding with SugarTerry George
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hotel RwandaAdam Wingard
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Godzilla vs. KongGore Verbinski
Director
1 film together · 7.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's EndAshley Avis
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black BeautyGavin Hood
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men Origins: WolverineOlatunde Osunsanmi
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Fourth KindPer Fly
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hammarskjöld: Fight for PeaceSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Nganù
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Hammarskjöld: Fight for Peace
as Moise Tshombe
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Nganù
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
as African Businessman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Nganù
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Hakeem Kae-Kazim has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
21 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Action Legend
Awarded
7 catalogue titles in action, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Nganù
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Nganù
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Hammarskjöld: Fight for Peace
as Moise Tshombe
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Fourth Kind
as Awolowa Odusami
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Jocard
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
as African Businessman
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Hammarskjöld: Fight for Peace
as Moise Tshombe
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
as Captain Jocard
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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