For director Ben Proudfoot, “The Eyes of Ghana” began with what he thought was a simple question.
It was the summer of 2021. The documentarian had been sent by UNICEF to Ghana to create a film about the history of the humanitarian organization. As he was riding in a van through the African nation’s capital, though, he saw the stone mausoleum for Ghana’s legendary revolutionary leader, Kwame Nkrumah.
“In a question that would change my life and bring us all here today, I asked, ‘Who is Kwame Nkrumah?’ And every Ghanaian in the car turned around and looked at me like I was a crazy person,” Proudfoot told Executive Awards Editor Steve Pond at TheWrap’s 2025 Toronto International Film Festival Studio. His research into Nkrumah, who led Ghana to its independence from Britain in 1957, eventually brought Proudfoot to the doorstep of cinematographer Chris Hesse.
The Ghanaian artist, who would become the subject of “The Eyes of Ghana,” served as Nkrumah’s personal cameraman and captured cinematic documents of the revolutionary figure’s liberation campaign and his presidency. Nkrumah was ousted from power in a 1966 coup, and his successors sought to destroy all filmed records of his reign. Hesse shocked Proudfoot, however, when he revealed that he had secretly preserved copies of his thought-to-be-destroyed films in London.
Thus, “The Eyes of Ghana,” which explores Hesse’s legacy and documents the attempts to bring his films back to Ghana, was born. “Right then and there, a 31-year-old Canadian filmmaker and a 90-year-old Ghanaian filmmaker shook hands and joined on the mission that has brought us here today,” Proudfoot said.
Along the way, cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder hopped onboard, as did Anita Afonu, a young Ghanaian filmmaker who stars in “The Eyes of Ghana” and is credited as one of its producers. Both artists found very different, but no less personal, reasons to make the film.
For Somerhalder, it was Hesse’s status as a fellow cinematographer that drew him in. “I don’t think there’s a lot of documentaries that will come my way that are about a cinematographer, [or] one as special as Chris,” Somerhalder explained. “I saw it as a huge opportunity to be able to reflect on the reason why we do what we do, which Chris so embodies, [and] the importance of having a cinematic historical archive of our times and the people of our times.”
Afonu, meanwhile, has known Hesse since 2011. She met him when she made a film about the rise and fall of Ghanaian cinema. For her, “The Eyes of Ghana” marked a chance to continue advocating for the restoration, digitization and repatriation of her nation’s film history.
“I have a degree in film and television production, and I haven’t seen films from the first-generation filmmakers of my country, which is really sad,” she told TheWrap. “I’m sincerely looking forward to that day.”
For his part, Proudfoot similarly views “The Eyes of Ghana” as a film about the importance of cinema history, but not just in Ghana. As concerns about censorship and the sanctity of historical records continue to grow around the world, the documentarian sees his latest film as a work of global importance.
“Look at Chris Hesse. For 60 years, he’s been working at this. Nobody’s paying him to do this. It’s his duty,” Proudfoot observed. “Chris’ story is a call to action. It’s a call to courage and bravery at a time when there are a lot of forces that wish to silence and erase the truth.”
