Overview

• Ben Proudfoot’s feature documentary premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, with executive production by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground.
• The film centers on 93-year-old Chris Hesse, who served as Kwame Nkrumah’s personal cinematographer during Ghana’s independence period.
• Festival audiences saw footage not publicly screened for roughly six decades, with the team saying original negatives are held in London awaiting digitization.
• Accounts of the archives’ past diverge, with some reports saying films were destroyed after the 1966 coup and others stating negatives were hidden abroad to protect them.
• Producers Nana Adwoa Frimpong and Anita Afonu frame the release as a call to preserve, digitize and return Ghana’s film history, while reviewers highlighted Kris Bowers’ original score.