filmmaking

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Supa Modo – Online African Film Festival 2020

If you like heartwarming stories of communities coming together you’ll love Supa Modo. Happy tears are pretty much guaranteed.

Supa Modo focuses on Jo, a young girl with a terminal illness, who is brought home by her mother and sister from the daycare where she lives with other kids like her. The only problem is that at home, she’s far away from her friends at the daycare. Instead of watching her favorite Kung Fu movies with her friends, her mum keeps her locked up indoors and buried under blankets to keep her protected from the outside world. Jo’s situation is more heartbreaking because despite her young age, she’s acutely aware of her mortality (“we all leave someday”) and seems to sense that her end is nearer now that her mother has brought her home.

Luckily for Jo, her neighbors want to help her feel special for her last few weeks on earth. They come together to help turn her into a superhero. The stunts they pull are a lot like the real life heartwarming story of Batkid, where San Francisco came together to turn a young cancer patient into Batman for the day. It demonstrates the power of film – they help people to escape from whatever troubles their experiencing; to generate happiness; and to bring people together.

Supa Modo is also a welcome alternative to the typical African festival film that focuses on war, poverty, and aids. It’s a perfect example of the Afro-Bubblegum style (see Akasha and Rafiki): a style that expands the view of Africa and who Africans are internationally with films that make art that is fun, frivolous, and fierce. It’s also refreshing to see a young character with a terminal illness that isn’t a white American (see Fault in their Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl); all young people around the world experience the same depressing illnesses. So if you’re looking for a new African film that presents a different ‘African’ story to the war, poverty, and aids stories that typically make the festival circuit, check out the heartbreaking but inspiring Supa Modo.

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No Bears – AFI Fest 2022

No Bears

Despite a 20 year ban on making or directing movies imposed on him in 2010, Jafar Panahi continues to make films. No Bears is the fifth feature film Panahi has made since the ban, and is probably his most political. The not one, but two films in No Bears are an attack on the hypocrisies of censorship and freedom of movement.

Now that Panahi has proved the house arrest and ban on film-making cannot stop him from making films, he’s been encouraged to make something even more inflammatory – an almost direct critique of the government and of laws against the freedom of movement. In No Bears, Panahi deliberately flaunts all of the rules that have been imposed on him. Firstly, he’s directing one film, and starring in another, breaking his filmmaking ban once again. Secondly, he shows he can make films from wherever he wants – he’s relaxing in a rural village near the border and directing his film crew in another country, as well as making a film in the village where he is staying. Thirdly, he’s creating new filmmakers – both in his cameraman shooting his film in Turkey and in the people he hands off his camera to in the village. Lastly, he also shows he can go wherever he wants. He goes right up to the Turkish border as if it’s nothing. All of these things deliberately flaunt his power in spite of the government’s restrictions on him. He proves that they’ll never silence him from making films, whether that’s in Iran or outside it, with him behind the camera or having inspired someone else.

On top of this, Panahi also sets up two films within No Bears to criticize the government and the culture is has fostered. One is a film within a film, following the story of a couple in Turkey that have finally found fake passports on the black market to leave the country. This narrative highlights the discrimination in freedom of movement – granted to certain people because of birth lottery, and hidden from others. The other follows Panahi himself, as he works on this film from a rural Iranian village along the Turkish border. The longer he stays, the more entangled he becomes in the backward customs of the town. This narrative serves as an analogy for the hypocrisies of the Iranian government and censorship committees. Just as they imposed filmmaking bans on him instead of looking to solve the problems he highlights in his films, the villagers choose to make him a scapegoat for their own feuds.

For a film that holds no punches in attacking censorship and freedom of movement, Panahi’s latest is a joy to watch. It’s filled with a dry humor that pokes fun of the establishment whilst retaining a serious message. Just as much as this, No Bears is also a testament to the filmmaking drive of Jafar Panahi. No matter how many restrictions are imposed against him, he’s continued to make films and inspire others. We hope he, and the Iranian filmmakers imprisoned with him earlier this year will be released and the filmmaking bans rescinded.

Head to our AFI Fest 2022 Hub for more reviews from AFI Fest 2022.