26 BEASTS OF NO NATION
Primary Productions, Parliament of Owls, Participant Media, and Mammoth
Entertainment. Originally bud geted at $4.3 million, Beasts of No Nation ultimately
came in at $6 million.Production
Encouraged by producers to shoot his film in South Africa, which has tax incen-
tives and a well- established filmmaking infrastructure, Cary Fukunaga insisted on
shooting in Ghana to achieve greater verisimilitude. Securing permissions from
the Ghanaian military, transporting three dozen crew members to remote loca-
tions (Koforidua and Ezile Bay) in Eastern Ghana and keeping them fed and housed,
finding child actors to play his boy soldiers all proved to be enormous logistical
challenges that Fukunaga was able to meet, despite battling monsoon rains, con-
tracting malaria, having equipment stolen and extras imprisoned— and even hav-
ing one of his co- stars, Idris Elba, narrowly escape death after accidently falling
off a cliff.Plot Summary
A young boy named Agu (Abraham Attah) lives in a small village in West Africa
with his parents, older brother, and two younger siblings in an unnamed country
overtaken by civil war. When rebels associated with the military approach Agu’s
village, terrified villa gers flee to the country’s capital. Agu’s father (Kobina Amissa-
Sam) is able to arrange safe transport for his wife (Ama K. Abebrese) and their
youn gest child (Vera Nyarkoah Antwi), but he has to stay behind himself with Agu
and his eldest son (Francis Weddey). Government forces rout the rebels in fight-
ing at Agu’s village. They then round up the remaining villa gers as suspected reb-
els. Just before being shot, Agu’s father tells his sons to run. The two boys try to
escape into the jungle, but Agu’s brother is killed. Agu is eventually dragooned
into a rebel faction known as the NDF. The Commandant (Idris Elba), Agu’s bat-
talion commander, takes Agu under his wing, and Agu befriends another NDF
child soldier, a mute boy named Strika (Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye). After being
raped by the Commandant, Agu is comforted by Strika, also a rape victim. An older
soldier named Preacher (Teibu Owusu Achcampong) gives Agu a hallucinogen
called “brown- brown.” Agu and Strika participate in a series of bloody battles as
the battalion captures several villages and kills scores of innocent men, women,
and children— “success” that earns them a summons to NDF headquarters to meet
the Supreme Commander, Dada Goodblood ( Jude Akuwudike). The soldiers (except
for Agu and Strika) spend the night at a brothel, and one of the prostitutes shoots
the lieutenant, badly wounding him. In retaliation, the Commandant and his fol-
lowers kill the women and abandon the city to the battalion. Now on the run from
their own faction, as well as the United Nations (UN) and government forces, the
battalion is decimated by airstrikes and Strika is killed in an ambush. The rem-
nants of the battalion shelter at a gold mine. After the ammunition runs out,
Preacher, now the Commandant’s lieutenant, calls for the soldiers to surrender
to the UN. The Commandant initially refuses, but Agu persuades him to relent.