Ejiofor is blown away by a fabulous new star
Time was on Chiwetel ejiofor’s side when he embarked on what would become his directorial film debut.
it is eight years since he read William Kamkwamba’s inspirational memoir about building a makeshift wind turbine using scrap to pump water to irrigate crops in his village in malawi. in that time the actor was able to work on the screenplay for The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind and cast a young actor to play schoolboy William.
He was also able to visit Wimbe, where the events took place, often enough for him to know he should make his film where it happened.
Over a career spanning two decades, the award-winning star of Twelve Years A Slave and Kinky Boots has worked with film-makers of the calibre of Stephen Frears, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Steve McQueen and Alfonso Cuaron.
He observed them, but realised he’d been making ‘ slightly directorial decisions all along’.
‘Part of an actor’s job is editorial,’ he said. ‘With the script, you’re trying to work out the best way to say something, or the best way to make a scene work.
‘The director’s making the choices. But you’re always engaged, in a kind of low-level directorial way.’
ejiofor, who divides his time between homes in London and Los Angeles, said as a film-maker he wanted to ‘create this teleportation experience for the audience and take them to malawi’.
‘They’re invited into a small village, where a couple are discussing whether they can afford to send their son to school. As intimate as those moments are, they’re universal,’ he told me in Park City, Utah, where the movie had its world premiere at the Sundance Festival.
(The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind will be launched on Netflix on march 1, though there are plans for it to be shown in some cinemas.)
it’s a touching drama. At its centre is a story about a boy and his father. ‘every father and son clash,’ the actor said. ‘i was also moved by the struggles of the people and what they were going through.’
When ejiofor first read the book he felt he was too young to play Trywell, William’s father.
eight years of development helped him grow into the role. But the film’s real breakthrough is maxwell Simba, who portrays William at 13.
The picture’s casting director threw a wide net in the UK and U.S., and used contacts in Kenya, South Africa and malawi in the hunt.
EJIOFOR watched an audition tape featuring Simba, but was puzzled. ‘He had a minimalism i was stunned by. i couldn’t understand how somebody so young, without any experience on camera, could know that doing very little could communicate these big emotional moments.
‘What he was doing was very powerful, so i got on a plane and flew to Nairobi to do a workshop.
‘maxwell had done a couple of plays in school. He was 15 playing 13. We were charmed by him and he got the part.’ Dick Pope, the cinematographer, captures the lad’s quality. The world of the film is in maxwell Simba’s eyes.
ejiofor is already working on another directorial project (this time set in America).
Before that, he and his collaborators at BBC Film are striving to ensure that The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind reaches audiences in the remotest parts of the African continent, so its energy is as widespread as possible.