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Recapping… Directed by Jinna Mutune, the film is titled Leo, a film about a Kenyan boy who dreams of becoming a comic book superhero… Though the boy ends up realizing that there's more than one way to be a superhero.

The film's website had this as an official synopsis:

… a charming and beguiling adult fairy-tale set in Nairobi, a Metropolitan City in Kenya that is a melting pot of East African culture, art, politics and commerce. It is a story about Maasai boy, raised in a low-income home, achieving his dream against all odds. LEO is a simple story that captures the essence of a child’s heart still open to all the posssibilities of achieving his dream in “Kenya” Africa.

So it's not a superhero movie in the traditional sense, but as conversations about black filmmakers making films across genres, Leo should benefit from that interest.

As noted previously, I dig the idea the film posits that black bodies are inherently supernatural, given *our* ability to survive and thrive in a white supremacist world, and thus, in that sense, we are indeed superheroes; Depicting Africans as potentially super-heroic, even if it's done metaphorically to emphasize some other salient point, or disseminate ideas about Africa and Africans that challenge dominant international perceptions of the continent and the people within it.

The film stars Trevor Gitonga as the titular Leo, and, as announced early last week, the film was to make its world premiere in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, November 29. And it did just that.

I was able to dig up this report on the film's premiere and significance via Kenya's own K24TV.

Watch it, learn, and then underneath it, you'll find the film's full trailer, as well as an interview with its director, in which she talks about the film, its origins, her process, her background, and more.

No word on whether Leo travel, although I'm sure it will. So stay tuned for details as they become available.

Here's its trailer:

And here's the insightful interview with the director, which is in 2 parts:

Trevor Gitonga

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