"The Lucky Specials": Helping People Respond to TB

The Lucky Specials has now been broadcast to nearly 300 million people across the world, becoming one of the most broadcast films in Africa. It also continues to collect international honors for its powerful storytelling and success in changing attitudes and creating awareness about tuberculosis (TB).

Most recently, it racked up five nominations in acting, editing and visual effects by the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Africa’s largest gathering of regional filmmakers. The awards take place in Rwanda in September 2018. The Lucky Specials’ director, Rea Rangaka called the AMAA “the perfect platform to celebrate and recognize this film’s success as well as its important message on personal strength and resilience for Africans across the continent.” The AMAA recognition follows an Honorable Mention for Narrative Feature at the recent 2018 Roxbury Film Festival in Boston, USA, held in June 2018. 

On June 19, DLA's Producer Regan Alsup addressed high school students visiting from across America about The Lucky Specials and the power of film in creating critical health awareness at the annual Global Health Youth Summit in Washington, DC. In an interactive workshop, Alsup spoke to the students about how storytelling through film has become a global force for change in delivering lifesaving information.  

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Now in the second year of its release, The Lucky Specials has continued to generate increased tuberculosis (TB) awareness in developing countries across Africa, gather critical entertainment acclaim, and inspire entertainment professionals to maximize their own potential social impact.  

In February 2018, The Lucky Specials was selected and screened at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, which boasts the largest collection of black films in America and is a global platform for African talent and voices.

In recognition of World Tuberculosis Day on March 24^th, the film was screened by the Netherlands-based KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation in The Hague, and broadcast to viewers in Trinidad and Tobago for the first time by the dual Caribbean nation’s major television network, TV6-TNT.

In April, The Lucky Specials was screened during the 2018 International Social and Behavioral Change Summit (SBCC) in Bali, Indonesia. During the summit, which was attended by 1,200 development practitioners in entertainment education and social impact media, Discovery Learning Alliance (DLA) participated in a panel and discussed the film’s production and distribution process, and the power of impact media to fight tuberculosis and other deadly diseases. At a skills-building workshop at the summit, DLA’s President, Aric Noboa and Producer, Regan Alsup discussed building successful partnerships in behavior change communication, particularly by engaging academia and utilizing learnings from behavioral economics.

Also in April, the film earned the 2018 Gold Medal in the Human Concerns category in the New York Festivals’ International TV and Film Awards. In addition, the film was screened at the African Movie Festival in Manitoba in May. Its next stop is the Roxbury International Film Festival this June in Boston, where it is an official selection.

In the near future, new television broadcasts are planned in Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bostwana. The Bostwana broadcast is sponsored by the Botswana Medical Aid Society (Bomaid), the country’s leading, private medical aid provider. To date, The Lucky Specials has been broadcast in 15 countries, sharing its important TB and health information across three continents, and is slated to reach millions more through continued broadcast and DVD distribution throughout 2018 and beyond.