NEWS & PRESS:
Movie Review: "Abanunule"
By Zach Hammill
“Abanunule” is about finding hope in the possibilities of redemption in a harsh place where it doesn’t seem to exist. Even though the story is set and was filmed on location in Uganda, it could take place anywhere. The film is peopled with orphan boys, but it could be about absolutely anyone.
“Abanunule,” which translates from Luganda to English as “The Redeemed,” follows nearly a dozen orphans living in a boys home, safe from a life on the mean streets of Kampala, filled with crime and drugs. This way of life is familiar to many of the non-professional actors playing the characters, several using their own given names, with fragments of their stories serving as the basis for this film.
The central story follows Freddy (in a tender performance by Ssengendo Mikidadi), the home’s oldest boy, star soccer player, and role model for the other boys. After several years of successfully walking a straighter path, he feels the seemingly inescapable pull of his former life, asking for prayers from a God he feels may not be listening—a theme which is woven throughout the story.
After Freddy disappears back into a hard life of huffing gasoline and violence, his absence affects the morale and spirit of the other boys. With a soccer tournament approaching and their star player nowhere to be found, another young boy named Patrick (Kimera Patrick) sells some of his items (including a dismantled stereo speaker in one of the film’s funniest sequences) to afford cab fair so he can take to the streets and bring Freddy home.
If this sounds dour, I can assure you, it isn’t. The uplifting film, written and directed with a surprisingly light touch by Minnesota filmmaker Alex Fournier, is also very humorous and sweet. Several sequences are laugh-out-loud funny, particularly one in which a young boy claims to communicate with a Santa Claus doll, and the argument that ensues with the young girl who doesn’t believe him for a moment. Another involves an extremely uncoordinated boy named David, who seems to be on the soccer team only because he happens to live in the same home as his teammates. The sweetness lies in their inclusion of him.
Because of the subject matter, the sometimes-bright/sometimes-gritty handheld cinematography and quick editing that best resembles the works of Paul Greengrass or Christopher Nolan, it would be easy to mistake “Abanunule” for a documentary. It is a fiction film, and one that earns its powerful moments. The scenes depicting drug abuse and violence are presented tastefully so the viewer gets the point, not in an in-your-face style that would overwhelm the film’s sweetness. It also never pushes an agenda upon the viewer and instead draws you into its very real world.
I should also mention that this literally no-budget film, three years in the making and shot with only one camera, was a collaborative effort between Mr. Fournier and the boys of Home Again, the real boys home featured in the film. The genuine, unforced performances from this cast with no prior acting experience provide the film’s enormous heart and realism. The imagery is equally breathtaking, with sunshine and a bright blue sky that pops as it looms over dusty landscapes and green soccer fields, also providing a glimmer of hope.
The best thing, perhaps, about the experience of watching “Abanunule” is the way it makes you feel long after the film has ended. It lingers, and makes you think about the times in our lives when we were, and maybe still are, in need—and worthy—of redemption ourselves.
NEWS & PRESS:
Giving A Voice
To The Voiceless
"CHS graduate films first movie in Africa. He hopes to use the film to raise money for orphans in Uganda."
By Forrest Adams
Orphans in Africa are the subject line of countless fundraisers, the images of many infomercials, the topics of many church missions. Alex Fournier, 30, of Eden Prairie decided to take a few steps further, traveling to Africa to spend times in a boys' home that's sponsored by his church.
The former Chanhassen resident went to Uganda to teach the orphans art. During several trips over one-and-a-half-year time period, he wrote a story and filmed a full-length feature film starring the orphans themselves.
Now he's sending it to film festivals to attract publicity and or partners/distributors for the fiction movie that's based on the reality many of the orphans have lived.
Contact Alex Fournier at (763) 226-4285 about holding a movie screening.he 1997 Chaska High School graduate who grew up in Chanhassen talked about the film that took him more than a year to shoot and three years to edit, saying it stars orphans because it is meant to shine a light on their predicament and give them hope.
He himself wants to give them a voice to speak with the world. "The idea is that these kids are more than orphans," he said. "I want to show the world and America that these kids have amazing stories. We should be tapping into these stories, for the purposes or education and entertainment, to show the world what?s going on over there."
Sadness, comedy and excitement burned onto one hour and forty minutes of DVD, the movie is called Abanunule (The Redeemed). It's a story of redemption, set at a boys' home and shot on the streets and in the alleys of Kampala, the nation's capital city.
Shooting the film, Fournier discovered "a rainbow of dark."
"For me it was really exciting. The country there is beautiful. You watch the local people walk by, and you're pointing the camera at them. You see even with the naked eye it looked like a tinted photograph because of the variations or dark on skin," he said.
Within that scene, there's turmoil. AIDS, violence and abuse have caused huge numbers of orphans to flee to the street to fight for their own survival. Many of the kids turn to drugs and violence. The drug of choice there is petrol. They sniff gas. Many of the orphans have themselves recovered from drug problems. It was a logical choice to create tension in the movie.
The story is like a compilation of stories, fiction, based on much of what the actors have experienced in their lives. It follows a 17-year-old former street orphan, Freddy, who gives up his positive life at the boys' home to return to drugs and violence on the street. With his departure, the rest of the boys in the home must learn to live without Freddy while they also try to get their soccer team into the finals without their star defensive player. One child, Patrick, sells what he can for taxi money and sets out alone to travel into the roughest parts of the city to find Freddy and bring him back.
