Depending on who you ask, Kwame Nkrumah is either a hero tragically robbed of the opportunity to see his visions materialize or a narcissistic would-be dictator.
The first prime minister and president of Ghana, Nkrumah oversaw the African country’s peaceful separation from Great Britain and became a passionate advocate for Pan-Africanism. He called for African nations to unite as a body that he dreamed of calling the United States of Africa, believing that unifying to control the continent’s natural resources would allow Africa to free itself from colonial influences and become a major player on the world stage. But he also embraced authoritarian tactics like declaring Ghana a one-party state with himself as president for life, eventually leading to a coup that toppled statues of him and forced him out of power for life.
Like so many great figures of history, Nkrumah is a complicated person, one who preached lofty ideas that his own human nature prevented him from consistently living up to. But if anyone can claim to truly know him, it would be Chris Hesse. The 90-year-old reverend served as Nkrumah’s personal filmmaker throughout his tenure leading Ghana, following him around the world with a camera as he met with leaders like John F. Kennedy and tried to rally the heads of other African states to join his cause. Hesse shot over 200 hours of documentary footage in the early 1960s, creating an archive of negatives that capture the first few chapters of a nation’s history.
“The Eyes of Ghana,” Ben Proudfoot’s new documentary about Hesse that explores how the nation’s origins are inextricably tied to filmmaking, begins with the reveal of a juicy secret. Hesse’s films were all burned during the 1966 coup that ousted Nkrumah, but the filmmaker secretly maintained an archive of his negatives in London. Even as a nonagenarian, he continues to make the trip from Ghana to London each year to ensure that his life’s work is being kept safe, holding onto the hope that the archive will be digitized and his side of the Nkrumah story will finally be told.
Hesse is starting to lose his vision — a reality that a man who spent his life looking through a camera is unwilling to accept just yet — but his passion for filmmaking hasn’t dulled in the slightest. “The Eyes of Ghana” sees him lecturing to a class of film students, mentoring documentary filmmaker Anita Afonu, and waxing poetic about the Ghanaian film industry that briefly flourished in the 1960s. As he tells it, Nkrumah saw how Hollywood movies helped forge a coherent cultural identity and thought Ghana could achieve something similar with a strong government-backed film industry (yet another choice that toes the line between liberal support of the arts and authoritarian tendencies). He built an entire studio ecosystem, and the nation was filled with cinema palaces showing both American and Ghanaian films to crowds of eager moviegoers.
“The Eyes of Ghana” is simultaneously a tribute to the way movies can change the world, a postmortem for a nation’s film industry (a lack of which Hesse believes has permanently hindered its identity), and a portrait of two men who were with Ghana from the very beginning. Hesse is infectiously charismatic, and seeing 15 minutes of his film footage digitized for the first time is a treat for history buffs. (Profits from the film will go toward digitizing the rest of the archive.)
The question of Nkrumah is more complicated: Hesse clearly reveres his late boss and believes he got an unfair shake from Western media, who were threatened by his anti-capitalist, pro-Africa views. That seems like a reasonable possibility, though the film doesn’t much engage with the opposing view. Hesse insists that he’s not trying to sway anyone’s opinion one way or another; he just wants his films to be seen so that his country’s history can be documented and people can form their own ideas about Nkrumah’s legacy. That comes across as a half-truth — it’s apparent that he believes that his films will cause the world to see his friend in a more positive light — but it’s hard to argue with the notion that our understanding of history would be better off if we had access to more primary sources about a complicated but highly influential figure.
A skilled documentarian who has won two of the previous three Oscars for Best Documentary Short, Proudfoot clearly understands the goldmine that his subject provides. Hesse’s life experiences would make for a fascinating movie, even without charisma, but the fact that the 90-year-old overflows with the joy of being alive and unending passion for cinema makes the director’s job a lot easier.
Proudfoot and his team, including Kris Bowers, pull all the right (if predictable) emotional strings, underscoring Hesse’s memories with majestic orchestral music fit for an Old Hollywood epic. The camera team finds angles that capture the twinkle in Hesse’s eye as he pores through old negatives and gazes up at shimmering projectors. Ditto for Edmund Addo, the aging theater owner who has devoted his entire life to reopening the Rex Cinema in Ghana, even at the expense of his relationships with his children. The video production is lush, the sentimentality laid on thick — this is a movie that’s far more interested in playing familiar notes about how cinema is magical and storytelling is vital for the already converted than taking a critical look at its subjects.
But… cinema is magical, and storytelling is vital. Clichéd as these tropes might be, they work for a reason, and it’s hard to walk away from “The Eyes of Ghana” without a spring in your step caused by the 90-minute love fest for this incredible medium. Hesse and Proudfoot take the long view of history, making the case that even if Nkrumah failed to implement his vision for a United States of Africa — hell, even if the next 10 people to pick up the baton fail too — the dream will endure because we have Hesse’s films keeping it alive. The arc of time is long, but it bends toward justice, “The Eyes of Ghana” argues, and movies can help bend it a little further.
Grade: B
“The Eyes of Ghana” screened at AFI Fest 2025 after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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