Deactivating Kenya's Toxic Trolls
2022 · 25m · Kenya
Directed by Mos Mwaniki
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
A Kenyan banker-turned-activist rallies celebrities and schools behind her "Be Kind" campaign against toxic cyberbullying.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 'Be Kind' campaign doc sounds like the most consensus-friendly activism imaginable, but Mwaniki's decision to follow a banker-turned-crusader through the actual machinery of online toxicity in Kenya gives it teeth most kindness narratives completely lack—it's arguing something genuinely strange about complicity and celebrity.
There's a formal restraint here, a refusal to sensationalize the very toxicity it documents, that sits comfortably within the lineage of character-driven advocacy cinema; Mwaniki treats the campaign as a studied portrait rather than a rallying cry, which is the harder, rarer choice.
What makes this work is the decision to let the contradictions breathe—letting celebrity endorsements sit uncomfortably next to grassroots organizing, letting Mwaniki's own visibility become part of the problem she's solving—that one structural choice transforms a well-meaning PSA into something with actual friction and doubt.