Supa Modo

Jo is nine, clever and sharp-tongued. Her illness has no cure and she is brought back to the village, to her family, to spend the time she has left. The days pass long and dull. Jo's only comfort is superhero films and thinking she is one of them. Her older sister Mwix has an idea: she gathers the villagers and asks them to act as though Jo has superpowers. The whole village joins in the game. The Kenyan film, directed by Likarion Wainaina, is in Swahili and runs seventy-four minutes. The mould is the illness drama, but the film does not play for tears; at the centre of the story is not death but a community agreeing to lie together for a child. Stycie Waweru plays little Jo. It was the production Kenya sent to the Oscars that year and became one of the most widely shown Kenyan films outside the country.