The Eyes of Ghana, the documentary about veteran Ghanaian cinematographer Rev. Dr Chris Tsui Hesse, has opened in cinemas, with IShowSpeed as a producer and Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers.
The 90-minute film, directed by two-time Academy Award winner Ben Proudfoot, opened on Wednesday, 28 October, at cinemas across the United States and Canada, including Regal, AMC and Cinemark, as reported by MyJoyOnline and the Daily Graphic. The release is organised by Proudfoot’s Breakwater Studios and Higher Ground, the production company set up by the Obamas. It was first billed as a one-night event, but Breakwater’s latest post on X lists screenings from 28 to 30 October, and the studio says more UK screenings have been added, with filmmaker Anita Afonu joining audiences in London.
The film follows Hesse, who served as personal cameraman to Ghana’s first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, as he works to rescue and return a hidden archive of more than 1,000 films capturing the birth of African independence in the 1950s and 1960s. According to BroadwayWorld, the footage has never been seen by the public. MyJoyOnline notes that the documentary premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
Just a day before the cinema release, Breakwater Studios announced that the film had been shortlisted for the IDA Documentary Awards, which celebrate excellence in non-fiction filmmaking.
IShowSpeed, real name Darren Watkins Jr., joined the project after his visit to Ghana earlier this year, when he spoke about his Ghanaian roots, and he has since shared the official trailer with his huge online following.
The involvement of the streamer and the Obamas has sparked debate at home about who gets to tell Ghanaian stories. Filmmaker Shirley Frimpong-Manso pushed back on that criticism on Joy FM, as reported by Adomonline, arguing that outside funding is normal in the film business. “Somebody said the most expensive thing about film is your time. It’s the time you put in it. It’s the ideas behind it. It’s the people who actually make the move,” she said.
Hesse’s archive will also be on show in Accra this week. Adomonline reports that the Institute of Film and Television at the University of Media, Arts and Communication (UniMAC-IFT), working with the UNESCO Ghana Office, will screen historic footage linked to his work on Friday, 30 October, to mark the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.
What do you make of this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
