Ghana’s Abraham Attah made headlines for his appearance in Netflix’s latest production-Beasts of No Nations, starring alongside Hollywood heavyweight-Idris Elba and others. His subsequent winning of the prestigious Marcello Mastroianni’s Best Young Actor award at the 2015 Venice Film Festival earlier last month placed him on the viral media string.
Abraham Attah has since been featured on CNN, People.Com, BrutallyUncensored.Com and several other global platforms— with his inspirational story of being a hopeless child street vendor in Accra who suddenly jumped to become an international award-winning actor pulling in the attention.
But Abraham Attah was not a little saint—he lied about his age, thinking the younger he said he was, that was going to score him a role he so much wanted in ‘Beasts of No Nation.’
Considering his situation at the time, we can say he wanted a change and perhaps saw an appearance in ‘Beasts of No Nation’ as his secure-getaway and was therefore adamant to do whatever it took to earn that spot—so told the film-makers he was 12 years old when he was 14.
Emmy-winning director of ‘Beasts of No Nation’-Cary Fukunaga in a recent interview with Vulture mentioned that “When we were shooting he [Abraham Attah] kept saying he was a different age because he thought that we wanted him to be younger. So he was 14, but he kept saying he was 12. We were like, “You’re fine whatever age you are. You just look younger. It’s fine.” He’s 15 now.”
Though international superstar-Idris Elba features prominently in the movie, the conversation has somewhat become all about Abraham Attah—with most of the interview questions everywhere being about the young star.
When asked about how Abraham was handling the sudden global fame and attention, Fukunaga told the website; “Abraham is cool as a cucumber. He enjoys the photos, he enjoys being onstage. At the same time, it still feels like him. I think he’s really enjoying it, but he’s a little bit tired.
He’s got a lot of school to catch up with right now. So the last two weeks have been, like, a blur. He went to Venice twice because he had to go back to receive the award on Saturday. He’s living and traveling with a friend of mine’s parents whose daughters were both actresses when they were little, and so they’re used to being sort of stage parents. They’ve been really great with him.”
While shooting ‘Beasts of No Nation’ in Ghana, Director-Cary Fukunaga and almost every crew member got malaria and according to Fukunaga, Idris Elba even got a flu.
“It was just as hard for them. Somebody got a cut while making pasta in the hotel room, and then the cut got infected because you’re in an incredibly fecund environment. Our props guy got dysentery. Our accountant got malaria. My assistant got malaria. My driver got malaria. The camera operator pulled his hamstring,” Fukunaga said.
The official trailer of ‘Beasts of No Nation’ was released in September and as Netflix announced earlier this year, the movie “will open in select cinemas in the US and on its streaming platform for the rest of the world” in October.
Netflix stated a few months ago that “Beasts of No Nation” is a powerful film that unfolds beautifully in the hands of director Cary Fukunaga, with Idris Elba delivering a career-defining performance.
We are so proud to bring a film of this calibre exclusively to Netflix members around the world at the same time as it appears in select theaters.”
Beasts of No Nation tells a story of a West African military leader (played by Idris Elba) who drafts a young boy (Attah Abraham) into his army of child soldiers…
Check out the trailer below…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xb9Ty-1frw
Good for him. That’s how it’s done in Hollywood. I don’t see anything wrong. He does look young