Supa Modo (2018)
★★★ — Supa Modo (2018)
Bring tissues. That's the first thing I'll say. But don't mistake that for a warning that you're about to be put through the wringer by something cheap or manipulative, because Supa Modo is neither of those things. It earns every feeling it stirs, and it does so with a quietness and grace that catches you off guard.
The set-up is simple, almost dangerously so. Nine-year-old Jo is terminally ill and obsessed with action films. She wants, more than anything, to be a superhero. And the village around her, her family, her neighbours, the local kids, decides collectively to make that happen. Not out of pity. Out of love and creativity and something that feels entirely human. That's the whole film, really. And somehow it's enough.
What makes it work is young Stycie Waweru as Jo. She's extraordinary. There's a quiet resilience in her performance, a real interiority, that means you never feel like you're watching a device designed to make you cry. You're watching a kid with a vivid imagination and a stubborn sense of self, and that makes all the difference. The supporting cast, the neighbours, the family, the local children who throw themselves into Jo's superhero fantasy, all feel just as lived-in. Nobody here is performing grief. They're just living alongside it.
The film was shot with real warmth and intimacy, and it captures rural Kenyan life without ever tipping into the kind of poverty tourism that foreign productions sometimes fall into. The cultural specificity feels genuine rather than decorative. This is a story rooted in a particular place and community, and that rootedness is exactly where its richness comes from. It reminded me, in some ways, of the feeling I got watching Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, another African film that trusts its community and its location to carry emotional weight without needing to reach for melodrama.
Where I have to be honest, though, is the predictability. From the moment the premise is established, you know every beat that's coming. The diagnosis, the rallying together, the bittersweet farewell. The film doesn't attempt to subvert or complicate any of it. If you're after something that wrong-foots you, or that complicates its own sentiment, you won't find it here. The themes of grief, community and imagination are handled with sincerity but not with the kind of complexity that would make you sit with the film differently on reflection. It walks a straight and familiar road.
The thing is, it walks that road with such dignity that the predictability almost stops mattering. This isn't a film about death, not really. It's about how the people around us choose to honour life, and imagination, and each other, when the alternative is simply to collapse under the weight of what's coming. That's a genuinely beautiful idea, and the film holds onto it without letting go.
I couldn't help thinking of Wonder while watching this, another film about a child dealing with something devastating, surrounded by people trying to do right by them. Supa Modo is the quieter, more grounded film of the two, less polished, less concerned with crowd-pleasing mechanics, and I think it's better for it.
Three stars. Predictable? Absolutely. Powerful? Just as much. Leave yourself a bit of time afterwards before you have to talk to anyone.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-04-22
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