Ghanaian writer-director Priscilla Anany knows about that balance, as displayed in her debut feature Children of the Mountain. The film follows Essuman (Rukiyat Masud), a young mother in Ghana’s capital of Accra whose son is born with a cleft palate and later diagnosed with cerebral palsy. In Ghana, children with cleft lips are stigmatized, and sometimes even sacrificed to tribal gods. We watch Essuman struggle and suffer, pursuing many dubious spiritual remedies while family members hint the child would be better off abandoned. Ultimately, salvation arrives in the form of the Graft Foundation, a real-life nonprofit offering deformity surgeries to low-income Ghanaians.
Ahead of the film’s April 17 world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, NFS spoke with Anany about telling difficult stories, “casting” kids with medical defects and convincing her mom to help fund her film.
from No Film School http://ift.tt/1VN9ufk
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