Film Review: The simple power of Mozizi

For decades, the programming around Malaria has been centered around cause and effects, illness and death. Nothing wrong with these strategies and indeed a combination of education, prevention and control measures, not to mention tons of resources have been put into reducing the impact of malaria on the world’s population.

The results have been varying depending on the location. Tanzania has had some success with the national prevalence of malaria halving along the last decade from 14% to 7%, this according to country figures. The disease remains a challenge though.

How then can one present a new narrative that accounts for this progress but makes clear the dangers ahead?

For Amil Shivji, one of Tanzanian cinema’s most prominent filmmakers, it involves using humor and comedy as tools to present a relatable approach to what could easily have been a harvest of tragedies.

Shivji’s animated film, Mozizi is one of two Tanzanian short films commissioned by Comic Relief, the UK based charity organization as part of the “Fighting Malaria…On Screen” initiative, the cinematic arm of a larger five-year partnership between Comic Relief and global healthcare company, GSK.

Narrated in Swahili with English subtitles, Mozizi takes the pseudo mockumentary approach favored by wannabe troublemakers. In Mozizi, a film crew follows the titular character, a female anthropomorphic character who is on a quest to find a new ‘home’ after her breeding grounds are recently destroyed by fumigation activities.

Quietly subversive in a way that does not draw too much attention either to the animation or the story, and totally effective in terms of the messaging, Mozizi was a hit at the just concluded Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) where it won the coveted Sembène Ousmane prize.

Mozizi opens with a documentary crew setting up in a studio before welcoming the titular character, a playful, soft spoken anthropomorphic person with a mean streak hidden behind her innocent façade. While Mozizi  has the head and neck of a mosquito, these body parts rest clumsily upon a human frame. Mozizi faces the camera and engages with the audience, revealing some of her likes (dark places, friendly gossip and old rumba music).

The film crew trails Mozizi as she goes along with a housing agent in search of a new dwelling place, preferably one in a dirty, swampy environment. The sequence that follows has Mozizi terrorizing the neighborhood in the ways that she knows how to best. She then meets up with health care workers who try to explain the burden of her persistence on the community. With these scenes Shivji who wrote, produced and directed his first animation project, demonstrates clearly without being burdensome, the facts of the matter as regards malaria. How the disease is transmitted, the clinical significance as well as the effectiveness of control measures.

Shivji’s Mozizi dispenses with the important information regarding malaria but makes such light work of it that it feels unforced and embedded within the loose narrative structure of the film. Mozizi has her say but the small Tanzanian community which she parasitizes is determined to have their way.

It happens quite often that well intentioned health interventions often adopt top-down approaches that may leave local communities without any agency in campaigns that they are supposed to benefit from. With Mozizi, Shivji advocates for a different way of doing things. He understands that many malaria campaigns have failed simply because beneficiary communities do not take ownership of them and subsequently fail to absorb the lifestyle modifications that can bring about change.

For a change- perhaps small, but one that is key to making a difference- Mozizi advocates for community ownership. The community, personified by an irritable mother, is determined to drive malaria away at all costs by making things as difficult as possible for Mozizi and her ilk to thrive. All kinds of locally available control measures are unleashed to thwart Mozizi at various stages of her life cycle development.

After putting on a decent fight, Mozizi bows to the determined measures of the community and submits herself to the will of the majority. It isn’t so much an act of sacrifice as it is one of surrender. Shivji’s messaging is clear. Malaria thrives when communities are not actively invested in the prevention and control.

Simple but powerful.


 This blog piece is commissioned by the Fighting Malaria, Improving Health Partnership but the views expressed are that of the author.

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