90-year-old filmmaker, Chris Hesse, recounts his career and, through it, recovers and resurrects the history of Ghanaian cinema.
Director: Ben Proudfoot
Runtime: 90
Fest Year: 2026
Cinema is an art form and an inherently political one. Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse, now in his nineties, knows this all too well. Hesse, who started out as the cameraperson for Ghana’s revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah, has always seen filming as a political act—one that must be preserved and passed down from one generation to another. When Nkumrah was overthrown in 1966, it was Hesse who managed to save 1,300 film reels from the hands of the military that wanted to burn all of Nkumrah’s records. Decades on, when young Ghanaian filmmaker Anita Afonu meets Hesse, it is a meeting of two people whose lives revolve around cinema—one who seeks to pass on his art and another who wants to inherit it and resurrect a forgotten history. (BC)