As the global health community prepares to observe World TB Day on March 24, Discovery Learning Alliance, the nonprofit subsidiary of Discovery Communications, opened “The Lucky Specials” in the U.S., a feature-length film about a small-time band in a dusty town in southern Africa with an important message about health.

Mandla (Oros Mampofu) is a miner by day and plays lead guitar for The Lucky Specials by night. He dreams of making it big in the music industry, but when tragedy strikes, the band, Mandla, and their friend Nkanyiso (Sivenathi Mabuya) struggle to hold everything together.

Woven into the narrative are messages to help audiences understand and respond to one of the world’s biggest killers, tuberculosis, which killed almost two million people worldwide in 2015. That is more people than died from AIDS that year. With a unique fusion of live-action drama and state-of-the-art animation, “The Lucky Specials” reveals the unseen world of TB from the inside out.  Diabetes and TB often present as co-morbidities, with diabetes recognised as a risk factor for TB, but TB also understood to worsen glycaemic control in people living with diabetes. 

The global health community has consistently worked with the public to close the knowledge and awareness gap about TB. This film is a great tool to support their efforts. It can make a tremendous difference among key audiences: for young men who rarely go for health services; for young women, also vulnerable to stigma, who will benefit from the film's strong female role models and caregivers. “The Lucky Specials” acknowledges the fact that TB and HIV often go hand-in-hand yet require specific treatment. The film will work to help reduce stigma.

The movie is based in South Africa, where TB is an epidemic and has increased 400 percent in the past 15 years. One percent of its population develops active TB each year.

Produced by Discovery Learning Alliance and Quizzical Pictures in association with HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, with support from Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and USAID and PEPFAR through Management Sciences for Health, “The Lucky Specials” was selected for the Toronto Black Film Festival and the Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou, where it received the SIGNIS award.

Discovery Learning Alliance and Quizzical Pictures previously produced the widely-acclaimed film “Inside Story", which focused on HIV, was broadcast to more than 400 million people across Africa and won several film festival awards.

Watch out trailer via the link below.