‘Beast of No Nation’ A lesson To The Ghanaian Movie Producer  

Ever since I boldly defy my family’s condemnations and abhorrence to become a filmmaker, news and happening about movies globally has become of paramount interest to me. The pursuance of this passion has necessitated this write up today. I would like to share with my readers a good lesson that ought to be shared with all movie lovers especially in Ghana. A lesson I picked from a wonderful movies called Beast of No Nation.

The popularity of this movie (Beast of No Nation) has spare me the time to go into details of it again in this write-up ,But for the sake of my readers who are yet to catch a glimpse of it, I will be generous to give a synopsis of it, probably to whet your appetite. Currently our social media in Ghana is inundated with news and comments about this award winning movie shot and directed in Ghana by Hollywood.

Beasts of No Nation is a war drama that tells the story of a 14-year-old child soldier (Abraham Attah)who lost his family and is recruited to fight under the command of a guerrilla warlord played by Idris Elba. This film, which has a tiny cinematic release ahead of its main run on Netflix, is relentless in its depiction of everyday callousness.

The film opens on Agu’s peaceful life in an unnamed village in West Africa, which is quickly shattered by the incursion of a larger civil war that seems reminiscent of events in Sierra Leone, Liberia, or Nigeria. Abandoned and walking through the jungle, he was picked up by a child militia commanded by Elba’s unnamed soldier. Rather than dismiss or kill him, in the film’s most telling moment, the Commandant instructs his charges to respect Agu’s potential. “A boy is a dangerous thing,” he lectures, and indeed Agu soon becomes one of his surrogate sons, toting an AK-47 and executing captured prisoners on orders.

This movie has so far received a lot of standing ovation from great people around the globe. The success and the applaud this movie has received since it was premiered has left me in a state of wondering, my mind is pregnant with questions.

I will be just enough, not compare the strength and the logistic prowess of Ghollywood to Hollywood, but I believe in our own small way, our movies when conform to international standard and opportunities are given to people base on talent but not face, we can make impact. There is one lesson I have learnt from this movie after I spent 2 hours 17 minutes of my time watching it, and it is in this write up, I would like to bring to the attention of my loyal readers.

The lesson is very conspicuous and uncharacteristic of Ghana movies. A poor boy from a slum area in Accra who has never been seen on any screen in the country will never be allowed to play any lead role in Ghollywood movie. I strongly believe such roles are reserved for well known celebrities the likes of Majid, Dumelo, Adjtey, and Prince Osei etc.

Abraham Attah would have sold his pure water till he grows old if not for the sake of Hollywood for rescuing him from the street of Accra. There are a lot of Ghanaians today who are dying with their talent because the system is not fair, The system is not ready to give young people the chance to excel this our attitude has derailed a lot of potential talent that would have today been in various hall of fames in the world.

I was opportune to read the script after the movie was shot, and I said to myself, if this movie had been directed by a Ghanaian or Produced by a Ghanaian, they would have added an addendum to the script that will feature Agu (Abraham Attah) as a child soldier who will later in the same movie grow up in ten years time as either John Dumelo, Prince Osei, Adjetey Annan etc. Thereby denying him the 2 hours and 17 minutes designated to him by the virtue of the script. But the Americans proved to us that the success of a movie is not about personalities or celebrities, but rather the consistency of the story line and good directing.

I will be courteous enough so to avoid mentioning names, but I have seen several movies in Ghana that performed abysmally even though galaxy of stars and celebrities were paraded for that movie.

Anybody who is intimately familiar with our movie industry would agree that we are not living up to expectations It is no exaggeration to say that Ghana is generously endowed with great diversity of talents Most of these talents can be harnessed to put Ghana on the Oscars stage. However, our movie industry is littered with antagonism. This phenomenon has done nothing but bred systemic corruption, favouritism, nepotism and inefficiency throughout the movie industry.

For how long are we going to relax our veins for people to travel all the way from their countries into Ghana to make good use of our forest reserves and our human resources? At the mentioned of Ghana movie, you need to be a magician to tell how the movie is going to end, because our movies always have these story line, ‘cheating wife or husband’ ‘family witchcraft’ ‘Rivalry in marriage’ ‘money rituals’ ‘broken heart’ etc Africa is surrounded with history that can be put on the screen to compete with movies that are shot in Hollywood, beast of no nation is a pure African history that was picked from our own backyard and transform into that epic movie we all love to watch again.

It is my fervent wish that, this movie will serve as an eye opener to all filmmakers in Ghana, I pray this canker of antagonism that has soaked the fibre of our movie industry will be dealt with, so that the ordinary man can be given the opportunity to showcase his or her talent. Long Live Ghollywood and Long Live Ghana.

Thank You.
Prince Legacy Samba
C.E.O. iPose Africa
www.iposeAfricaonline.blogspot.com
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