The Huffington Post recently named Akosua Adoma Owusu “Most Promising Filmmaker” at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and one of the “Top 30 Black Contemporary Artists Under 40”. Her semi-autobiographical film, Kwaku Ananse has been winning awards of its own on the international stage this year. Now, both film and filmmaker are headed to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where Kwaku Ananse will make its North American debut.
Kwaku Ananse is one of a handful of shorts being featured in the program titled ‘To Repel Ghosts: Urban Tales from the African Continent’, which showcases remarkably uncanny and fiercely contemporary African stories.
Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ghanaian director and writer of the acclaimed short film Kwaku Ananse (which Ciné Kenya featured here), is thrilled to have her first narrative short nominated by the Africa Movie Academy Awards. “At its inception, I struggled to find a Ghanaian audience that would value our traditional story in contemporary cinema,” says Owusu, “it’s truly humbling Kwaku Ananse received the AMAA nomination. “
Kwaku Ananse was commissioned by Focus Features, as part of their prestigious Africa First Award Program, and supported by the Sarah Jacobson Grant, Art Matters grant, and a well-received IndieGogo Campaign. The short film is a re-telling of the classic West African fable with a semi-autobiographical twist, featuring her uncle, Ghana’s legendary palm wine musician, Koo Nimo as Kwaku Ananse. Owusu received this award after gaining international attention with her short films, Drexciyaand Me Broni Ba, as well as from her work within the art world at the famed Studio Museum in Harlem. Me Broni Ba, specifically, screened at over 80 international film festivals and was later acquired for distribution by The Cinema Guild.
Photo credit: Yaanom Multimedia
Combined with the unique co-production efforts of acclaimed Mexican producer, Julio Chavezmontes (Sundance New Frontier “Halley”) and Lisa Cortes (Executive Producer for Academy Award Winning “Precious”), Kwaku Ananse premiered in competition at the prestigious Berlinale Film Festival, as part of the Golden Bear competition, and was met with rave reviews. Says the Guardian Nigeria,
“If Nollywood was absent at the Berlinale, Ghana was not. Akosua Adoma Owusu gave Ghana something to cheer about at the Berlinale.”
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Between travelling internationally to screen her acclaimed works, and hustling to acquire the funding needed to propel everything forward, Owusu is working hard to both further her own dreams and inspire other African filmmakers that they, too, can do the same. Recently awarded the Most Promising Filmmaker prize at Ann Arbor Film Festival and named in the Huffington Post of “Top 30 Black Contemporary Artists Under 40”, she’s certainly paving the way to do both and is thrilled that Kwaku Ananse, is preserving a piece of Ghanaian mythology and is being so well-received by international audiences.
Ciné Kenya 