Little Giant Helicopters: Mozambique’s Helicopter Boy

A Mozambican boy who builds life-size models of helicopters and cars out of wire and cardboard has big ambitions.

Luciano Armindo is a brilliant 12-year-old boy with a fascination for engineering and an extraordinary hobby: collecting scrap cardboard and wire and meticulously designing and building life-size models of helicopters and cars in front of his home in southern Mozambique.

In Giant Little Choppers, filmmaker JJ Nota follows the budding engineer and his brother as they create their remarkable replicas.

Luciano hopes to one day turn his scrap models into real vehicles, or even a rocket ship, and his engineering dreams are subject to a possible scholarship.

JJ Nota is a Mozambican filmmaker and co-founder of Afrocinemakers, a film incubator project. His 2020 film Ontogenesis won the national short film competition and screened internationally at festivals. Since then he has made other award-winning short films.