{"id":952375,"date":"2026-10-30T21:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952375\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T21:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:54:09","slug":"obama-backed-doc-film-focused-on-ghana-produced-by-woman-with-b-c-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952375\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama-backed doc film focused on Ghana produced by woman with B.C. roots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>              Obama-backed doc film focused on Ghana produced by woman with B.C. roots<\/p>\n<p class=\"pubStamp\">Published 12:36 pm Friday, October 30, 2026<\/p>\n<p>Surrey-raised filmmaker Nana Adwoa Frimpong produced The Eyes of Ghana, an acclaimed documentary executive-produced by U.S. presidential couple Barack and Michelle Obama, Higher Ground founders.<\/p>\n<p>The 90-minute feature doc explores the life and work of 93-year-old Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse, whose archive chronicles Ghana\u2019s early years as a sovereign nation.<\/p>\n<p>Hesse served as personal cameraman to Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana\u2019s first president. As his eyesight faded, Hesse rescued more than 1,000 films capturing the West Africa country\u2019s fight for independence in the 1950s and 60s.<\/p>\n<p>The film, world-premiered a year ago at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), is now in theatres across North America including Surrey\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.landmarkcinemas.com\/film-info\/eyes-of-ghana-the\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Landmark Guildford on Sunday, Nov. 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong, a director, writer and creative producer, says she\u2019s thrilled to have the movie shown in her hometown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy parents still live there (in Surrey) and they\u2019re inviting everybody they know,\u201d Frimpong said on the phone from New York City. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. I never dreamed that my home theatre would play a film that I produced. It\u2019s very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A Surrey resident until age 18, Frimpong now lives in Los Angeles and works for Breakwater Studios to \u201cilluminate stories of women and people of colour,\u201d the company website notes.<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong\u2019s parents grew up in Ghana and later found a home in Canada with their children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me to be making a film like this, my first big film, and to have it call back to where my parents are from, where my sisters and I grew up knowing and believing was an extension of our home (in Canada), it\u2019s a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Frimpong\u2019s passion for storytelling, the Breakwater website says, is marked by her past community organizing work around accessibility rights for students.<\/p>\n<p>Her advocacy \u201cled to the implementation of the first genderless bathrooms in the University of Toronto Scarborough\u2019s 58-year-old history, the publication of the first online print journal, MAYA, to honour women storytellers on campus, headlining a woman\u2019s storytelling conference with Founder and Executive Director of the Me Too Movement, Tarana Burke, and hosting the annual 2017 TEDxUTSC conference as the first woman to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A trailer for The Eyes of Ghana, directed by Oscar-winning Nova Scotian Ben Proudfoot (Breakwater Studios), is posted on Youtube. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Obama-backed doc film focused on Ghana produced by woman with B.C. roots Published 12:36 pm Friday, October 30,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-952375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}