TORONTO — Two-time Canadian Oscar-winner Ben Proudfoot says key archives tracing the story of Africa’s liberation movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s are at risk of being lost forever.
The Halifax-born director says he hopes his feature film, “The Eyes of Ghana,” can ignite preservation efforts spearheaded by his main subject, Chris Hesse.
Hesse is a 93-year-old filmmaker who was the personal cinematographer to Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, who led a push to free the continent of white colonial rule.
The films Hesse made with the revolutionary leader were destroyed following a coup in 1966 but Proudfoot says the original negatives are stored in London, waiting to be digitized.
Proudfoot won Oscars for doc shorts about basketball pioneer Luisa Harris and the impact of music instruction on L.A. public school students.
“The Eyes of Ghana,” executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday and screens again Friday.
Before the world premiere, Proudfoot and his Canadian-Ghanaian producer Nana Adwoa Frimpong and Ghanaian producer Anita Afonu detailed a bigger mission than just finding a buyer for the film.
”This is important. This is not just another thing. Actually, this is essential and we will find the right partners,” Proudfoot said Thursday.
“It is the extraordinary part of documentary filmmaking when you can help someone tell their own story and it ignites a world of like-minded people to make real change in the world. It doesn't get any better than that.”
Afonu, who appears in the film, says she is happy this story is being told while Hesse is still alive.
"I will be even happier if his dream of these films to be digitized and repatriated happens before he leaves us,” Afonu said.
“I will be so happy about that. He deserves it. He's worked so hard. So hard."
Frimpong, who did an undergrad degree at the University of Toronto before studying film at the University of Southern California, said she hoped "The Eyes of Ghana" sparks a broader conversation about African films and political agency.
"I think people have a limited idea of what it means to tell a story about Africa or Africans and I think what our film does is it tries to at least start the conversation that you should be interested, that you should pursue question-asking if only to hopefully understand another person," said Frimpong.
The TIFF world premiere is a sort of homecoming for the L.A.-based Frimpong, who recalled attending TIFF when she was younger.
She said returning with this feature brings many emotions.
“To think that (I return with) this film, which feels so representative of my family and the people that I've loved, there are no words," she said.
"I've been trying to express it to myself, what this moment feels like, but there's no sort of math I could have done to get to a moment like this, so I'm just grateful and excited."
The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sept. 14.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2025.
Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
