Kilifi’s 12-year-old boy in Sh2b movie off to Rome
Monica Kagia
A 12-year-old boy from Magarini area in Kilifi county who starred in an Italian big-budget movie, Tolo Tolo is headed to Rome for the grand launch of the international film.
Birya Nassor Said from a poverty-stricken family in Mambrui Village was flown to Nairobi to get his Visa ready then proceeded to Italy for the grand screening of the Tolo Tolo movie that is set to be shown for the first time to the public in January next year.
When journalists caught up with him accompanied by his mother, Mkombe Fatuma at the Malindi International Airportl, Nassor said he hopes the movie will shine on his talent and transform his life.
Speaking for the first time since the film was shot, Nassor said his courage and braveness led him to being selected to be part of the cast. “My journey to stardom begun on March 25 this year.
I was playing with my friends when we saw tourists passing by. We decided to follow them speaking in broken English, which got the tourists found really funny and they could not stop laughing,” he recalls.
Little did they know that the tourists were international movie makers who were scouting for a character that would fit in their role.
They picked him. What followed next was a series of shooting in Malindi and Magarini before they proceeded to Morocco and Italy where he and his mother spent three months shooting. Locally, the movie was shot in Masheheni, Kibao Cha Fundisa and Sabaki Bridge. In Italy, they shot the movie in Bari, then to Rome, Malta.
