“Because children are the future,” shouts Jo, the eponymous hero of Supa Modo, to the question of why the bad guys would want to steal them. The first day of the 11th edition of BIFFES, saw the screening of two films – Capernaum and Supa Modo – with young children at the core of the story.
There is little in common in the stories of the two films; in fact, they seem diametrically opposite in many ways. But in the characters of the children, we see a common resilience, an awareness of their reality, and an inherent sweetness despite the difficulty of their situations.
In the Oscar-nominated Capernaum, directed by Nadine Labaki, Zain (tremendously acted by Zain Al Rafeea), a 12- or 13-year-old boy , is produced in court after being arrested for stabbing someone. He tells the judge he wants to sue his parents for the life they have thrust upon him. (Earlier this month, Raphael Samuel made news in India as he announced that he was going to take his parents to court for not taking his consent before bringing him into the world.)
Zain says, “I don’t want them to have any more children,” after being told that his mother is pregnant, adding that he is tired of people having children when they can’t take care of them. The film shows in unflinching detail the daily struggle that Zain faces and which has toughened him (he even talks like a much older person, employing curses and abuses wherever possible). Born in a poor household with numerous younger siblings (even he seems unaware of how many he has), life is a struggle with parents who are negligent at best and at worst, treat him like a commodity.
When his plan to save his sister Sahar from marriage to Assad, the local grocery store owner, fails, Zain leaves on his own. He then meets an Ethiopian woman Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) and her son, Yonas, who are illegally living in Lebanon. One day Rahil does not return home and Zain takes on the responsibility of looking after the baby, resulting in some of the most affecting scenes in the movie.
In the Kenyan film Supa Modo, directed by Likarion Wainaina, Jo (Stycie Waweru) is a bright, cheerful young girl whose family has been told that she has only two months to live. Jo has a fascination for superheroes (Superman over Iron Man) and the wall near her bed is plastered with posters of superheroes as well as Jackie Chan.
Jo’s mother, a midwife, (played by Marrianne Nungo) decides that Jo will not spend any more time in the hospital despite the protests of her older daughter, Mwix (Nyawara Ndambia). “There is nothing they can do there that we can’t do here,” she says. “She has to go out, play with her friends and be a child,” says Mwix. But her mother insists that Jo stays inside, warm under three blankets and sweaters.
Mwix comes up with a plan to let Jo believe she is a superhero, starting with small scenarios that quickly move on to much bigger ones involving the whole village. Jo, unlike Zain, has love and affection not only from her own family but also the village who think of her as their own. And perhaps most strikingly, Jo can choose to escape the sadness of her reality for a while but for Zain, reality is brutal; there is no respite or escape. “I wanted to be a good man, loved and respected. But God didn’t want that,” he says.